Thunderbirds Ficlets and Prompts
by PreludeInZ
Summary: Being a collection of various short fics, mostly under 2k words and not worth publishing as single pieces. The following run the gamut of humour, angst, etc. Most are the results of prompts sent to me over on tumblr! This is the best place to send me prompts, generally speaking, although I can't ever make promises that I'll execute what I'm given.
1. Dancing with Dugongs

Alan's waiting at the end of the lane with folded arms and a sour expression, when Gordon breaks the surface. Before he can push off the wall and invert himself for another lap, he realizes Alan is glaring daggers at him and he treads water for a few moments, catching his breath. "Uh. You need something, little brother? You're gonna mess up my lap times."

"Forget your lap times. You already have a gold medal, you aren't getting any better. You peaked already."

" _Hey_!" Gordon objects, offended. He swims to the edge of the pool and rests his forearms on the edge. "What's gotten into you? What'd I do this time?"

Alan brandishes a piece of paper, crumpled in his hand."You're going to need to mail it again," he announces. "Because it might fool Scott, and it'd definitely fool Virgil, but it didn't fool _me_ , and I'm the one who opened it. And I'm just _so mad_ you didn't let me in on this as soon as you thought of it. Dude, _so not cool._ "

"Check your helmet seal next time you're in space, Al, some of your brains have leaked out. What're you on about?"

Alan waves the piece of paper again as though that answers the question, and Gordon rolls his eyes, hauls himself out of the pool. "Gimme."

He shakes his hands before he takes the page, flicking most of the water off, and then wipes his palms on the hem of Alan's shorts as an extra precaution. Alan drops to sit on the ground next to his brother, still scowling as Gordon's gaze wanders down the page. "I'm not saying it's not _brilliant_ , but you should've let me in on it. C'mon, Gordy."

Gordon reads the letter in full, then reads it again. He pauses to press a hand to the side of his head, tilting it sideways and suctioning water out of his ear canal with a soft pop. "Wow. Oh man. I _have_ peaked. I would never have thought of _this_. This is _genius_."

"…what, you didn't send it?" Alan's eyes widen and he snatches it back. "You mean it's _real_? …are we celebrities? Really?"

"Guess so!" Gordon's grin is irrepressible. "I mean, IR's pretty famous, right? We have to do it. We _have to_. Oh man. Okay. We've gotta call a meeting. This is _important_."

* * *

" _No._ Unequivocably no. In fact, _absolutely not_."

There's a twin chorus of protest from Alan and Gordon. Virgil hasn't commented one way or the other, but Scott's arms are folded across his chest and he's holding the letter. John's on the holocomm, but he'd been sleeping and when told what the subject of the meeting was, he'd groaned audibly and rolled back over in bed.

"But _Celebrity Alligator Wrestling_ ," Alan whines, but this is all he seems able to offer by way of argument. "They think we're _celebrities_."

"Well, we're _not_. This shouldn't even have come here, it should have gone through that PR firm Lady Penelope has representing us. And we don't belong on TV, it sends the wrong message. It's self-aggrandizing and the wrong kind of publicity."

Alan slumps on the couch, pouting, and Gordon takes over. "C'mon, Scotty! You let Virgil do that naked calendar for Stanford–"

Virgil raises his hands defensively, "Whoa, that was for charity! I'm a Stanford grad, the Dean of Engineering called me personally–what was I supposed to say? And I wasn't _naked_ , Gordon, I was tastefully shirtless, and–"

"Well, close enough!"

"Oh, like _you've_ got room to talk, you showed more skin in that Sports Illustrated spread."

"Because I'm an _Olympian_. You get interviewed by Sports Illustrated when you _win the Olympics_." Gordon scoffs, flexes. Virgil rolls his eyes.

Scott sighs and massages his temples. "Gordon, we really can't–"

Gordon changes tactics, tries to swing Virgil back over to his side. "You just don't want to because you're _scrawny_ , me and Virgil will make you and Alan look like wet noodles."

Alan sits up straight at this, pouting. " _Hey_! I'm not–"

John's hologram grumbles, interrupting, "Guys, can I get off the line? Since this is clearly ludicrous and was not worth waking me for? Anyway, Scott's right, the kind of reputation these shows have is–less than stellar."

"You think everything on Earth is 'less than stellar', Johnny," Gordon points out, not incorrectly. "Probably you shouldn't be on TV anyway, you'll _blind_ people with your lack-of-a-tan. Fishbelly."

John rolls his eyes. "Yeah, well, I mean it this time. How would you feel getting hauled out of the house to be wrangled by vapid TV stars all day, when all you want to do is just be an alligator in peace? You do what you want, Gordon, but I want no part of it. I think it's cruel and exploitative and inane programming for shock value."

This puts a damper on the whole idea and firmly takes Alan out of Gordon's corner. It takes Gordon most of the way out of his own corner. "…I didn't think about that."

"Yeah, I'm out," Virgil agrees, folding his arms. "If we do anything, it should be the _opposite_ of that. If someone wants to sign us up for…I don't know, Dancing with the Dugongs, then _maybe_ we could consider it. Some sort of worthy cause."

John yawns widely and settles back down. "If common sense was all it took to talk you guys out of it, then I guess it was worth waking me after all. G'night." He blinks away.

Scott uncrosses his arms and tosses the crumpled letter into the nearest trashcan, satisfied with himself the way he is whenever problems get resolved. "That settles that, then."

Only, as he turns and leaves the room, Gordon and Alan share a look and then break into mirrored grins. It's Alan who speaks up, though he and Gordon have clearly had the exact same idea. "So, Virge. Dancing with Dugongs, huh?" The youngest Tracy elbows his big brother in the ribs. " _That_ sounds like good PR."

Gordon's on Virgil's other side now, an arm around his brother's broad shoulders. If they can rope Virgil in now, then it's three on two, then the arguments as good as won. "Maybe even something we could call Lady Penelope about."

Virgil's always been the fulcrum of the family lever. He looks back and forth between Gordon and Alan and then he lights up with a grin of his own. "You two are nuts," he declares. "Let's call her."

* * *

Not a week later they're all off the coast of Indonesia, including John, who's been convinced that this is a good cause, even if he's now half sunburn, half freckles and grumbling about gravity. Lady Penelope's come along, with a film crew in tow, and the boys are making a PSA about the declining Dugong population in the South Pacific.

Virgil's tastefully shirtless once more, and Gordon's trunks have the olympic rings emblazoned across the rear, just in case anyone (Lady Penelope in particular) might have forgotten about his gold medal. Alan's still not quite over the "wet noodle" comment, and is wearing the t-shirt he hasn't taken off, not even in the water, since their arrival. Scott joins him on the end of the pier where they've been diving.

"It was a good idea. Better than the alligator thing," he comments. "And you're not a wet noodle."

Alan grins. "It was mostly Gordon's idea. Virgil, too, he found the actual charity. Are we famous, Scott?"

Scott shrugs. "Sort of, I guess. I don't know if I'd say we're _celebrities_ , Lady Penelope's name on this thing is going to carry more weight than any of ours. But International Rescue has a reputation, and–well. Maybe it's about time we started trying to save more than just people."

Watching his brothers, frolicking in the water, Alan nods in agreement. Better than wrestling poor defenseless alligators any day.


	2. Lies

Of course she was proud of Jeff's boys. That was a grandmother's job, to be proud of your grandchildren. And she told them so whenever she got the chance. Whenever Alan got back from one of his solo space jaunts, having trusted his gut and his natural ability and done his best, Grandma Tracy told him how proud she was.

Whenever Virgil and Gordon got back from a particularly grueling rescue, high on adrenaline and laughing and wrestling and breaking off in the middle of shoving and punching each other to scoop her into warm embraces and chatter about how well it had gone, she listened and nodded appreciatively at the right moments, and again, told her boys just how proud she was.

Whenever John or Scott made a particularly tough call, Grandma Tracy was there, letting them know that whichever way it went, she was proud, would always be proud of them.

But honestly, there were lies of omission being told, when she told the boys how proud she was. Because she was prouder of Alan when he was bent over his schoolwork, working out the only problems that should have troubled a boy his age, quadratic equations and calculus. She was proudest of him when he was just being himself, lanky and awkward and still halfway a child.

She was prouder of Gordon when she watched him swim laps of the pool, just for the love of it, not to keep himself in peak physical condition for when people would need him, but just because it made him happy. When Gordon grinned and cracked jokes and pranked his brothers, she was prouder of him than she ever said.

When Virgil slipped sideways out of his role as the family rock, and just allowed himself to be, to indulge in those secret, soft passions, the music and the painting and the quietude of his actual personality. When Virgil was vulnerable and sensitive and honest with her about how much heworried about his brothers. That made her prouder than she could say, when the middle child dropped the brave face.

She didn't see John nearly as often as she wished she did, but more than anything she was proud of his unaugmented brilliance, when John disconnected and descended and became part of the world again. When he got to listen to his family in person, with his dry wit and his sharp observations, his ability to get on Brains' level, to draw their sixth, ersatz brother into the family proper.

She was proudest of Scott when she got to see him being proud of the same things she was, the real things, the things that mattered. Not the things that the boys did, but the things that they were. When she shared a secret glance over at the eldest and caught him grinning back at her, about Alan, about Gordon, about Virgil or John. Grandma Tracy swells with pride, when she knows that Scott sees what she sees, and knows how it's important.

And she's proud of her own son, of Jeff, even missing as he is. She's never given up hope. She's proud of what he's made, of what he's done for the world, the gift he's given in the form of his children, with their righteousness and their loyalty. But she wonders, as she lies about what she's proud of on her absent son's behalf, if Jeff was prouder of who his boys are, or of what he made them.


	3. Monster

There are six years and Virgil in between Gordon and John, and most of the year Scott and John are away at the GDF's Military Academy. Scotty's sixteen and _thriving_ and when he's home school is all he talks about, and he only ever wants to get back, get graduated, and move on to the USAF Academy, where his name's been down since he was Gordon's age.

Gordon's age is eight, and this makes John fourteen, and he isn't thriving _at all_. Home from school with Scott, John's worn out and frazzled and retreats to his room almost as soon as he's in the door, aching for the solitude he lost in boarding school. It's not the schoolwork that's too much (though John's usually sterling academics are suffering too), it's the environment. Dorms and crowded classrooms and rigid structure and rules, and Scott outshining him at every turn.

"Let him be," Grandma Tracy advises Gordon and Alan (five years old and impossible to separate from whatever brother is his favourite that week), when they're sick of hearing about Scott's posse of friends back at school, and have handed him off to infinitely tolerant Virgil, because they want to play with John. "Johnny's gotta recharge his batteries a bit, and he'll play with you when he feels better."

Gordon and Alan permit John a very generous ten minutes to feel better. Then the pair of them creep upstairs and push open the door of John's room at the end of the hallway.

It's the middle of the day, but the room is dark, the lights off and the blinds drawn. Alan still sleeps with a nightlight and he makes the tiniest whimper and latches onto Gordon's sleeve. It's chilly in here, too. John's got the fan on full blast and as far as Gordon can tell, his big brother is buried beneath a heap of blankets on the bed.

"Johnny?" Gordon whispers, because the room seems to demand whispers.

There's a long pause, and then the voice from the bed is muted, sleepy. "Nnn. What?"

"You wanna play, Johnny?"

John's strawberry-blonde head pokes out from beneath the blankets and his eyes are red-rimmed and dark-circled. "No. I mean, sorry, no thanks. Gordon. Alan. Maybe later. Go play with Scott."

Emboldened by the newly apparent presence of their second oldest brother, Alan pipes up, "We wanna play with _you_ , Johnny. Gramma says you need your batteries. I've _got_ batteries, they're in my fire truck, you can have 'em."

This, at least, gets a tired laugh and Gordon and Alan cross the room to clamber onto the bed. John scoots over to make room for Alan to flop on top of the pillows, and for Gordon to sit cross-legged next to him. "Scotty says you got monsters for teachers," Gordon offers, conciliatory. "D'you really?"

"Wow," Alan adds solemnly, blue eyes wide. " _Monsters_."

"The whole _school's_ a monster, if you ask me," John answers, and the teenage melodrama is lost on the two youngest. He groans and burrows back under the blankets again. Then, muffled. "I dunno, guys. I feel all chewed up. Come back later, okay? Maybe we'll play after…after dinner or something. Sorry."

"Can we stay, John? We'll be quiet." Gordon looks over his shoulder towards the door. "Scott's being _boring_."

"I can go get my firetruck," Alan offers, ever helpful.

John shrugs (or Gordon thinks he does, anyway, the pile of blankets shuffles a little, looks like another sort of monster, swallowing pale, skinny John). "S'fine."

So they stay. And, gradually, just by being little boys and talking earnestly about how much they've missed John and how school's been for Gordon and how kindergarten's been for Alan, they coax their big brother out from under the blankets, and get a smile back on his face.

And when Gordon, dutiful and unable to keep his mouth shut, makes his report to their father about the existence of monsters in John's life, John's next semester starts at a much smaller technical school, with far fewer rules and far fewer monsters.

Gordon doesn't tolerate monsters. Especially not ones that take bites out of his brothers.


	4. Accuracy

Get the whole family together for Christmas, the cabin-the cabin is what they've always called it, but this does a disservice to the grand old hunting lodge in Northern Colorado-is all lights and pine and the scent of cinnamon. Scott's on leave and John's taken a break from training, Virgil and Gordon and Alan are between terms of various levels of school.

The snow's fresh and the trail's been marked out, and the race is on.

Gordon's disqualified from competition by the fact that he's faster than everyone else, and he's only racing against himself. He'd been out at five this morning, and had gotten back at six thirty, whooping and waking the whole household with the announcement that he'd beaten last year's time. Alan's too young-or, at least, Grandma had said "no guns" when the youngest had asked if he could go along. Skiing ten miles without getting to handle a rifle had sounded unappealing to Alan, so he's back at the cabin with hot chocolate, waiting for the winner.

John's already at the checkpoint by the time Virgil catches up, and there's a rifle propped against the fence at the end of the shooting range beyond him. They're skiing the course in opposite directions. Scott's got John's time beat, but John's the better shot, less impatient, waiting as he is for his heart rate to steady so he can shoot straight. Virgil's slower than John, but he'll nail every last target at the range, without needing to pause. So the eldest three are more or less in a dead heat for this year's title.

"Time?" John inquires, tugging a knit wool cap off his head and following it with a pair of iridescently glinting sunglasses, pushed up into his ginger hair. He tucks the former in the strap of the rifle-sling crossing his back. The sun glints bright off the snow and John sniffs in the cold, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand. "I'm twenty-tw0 and a half minutes, one lap to go," he offers.

"Twenty-three forty," Virgil grunts and closes the distance between the trail and the range. He loosens the strap of his own rifle, then drops to his knees to shoot prone. "I don't think normal families have an annual biathlon," he comments, bracing the butt of the gun against his shoulder and lining up his first shot.

John laughs at this, the way John so rarely does. "I don't think normal families own eighteen hundred acres in Aspen, either," he points out, lifting his own scope to his eye and exhaling. He takes his first shot, pings off the center of the target, a twenty-two caliber bullet leaving a dent in the metal.

Virgil's shot echoes John's and there's a grunt. "Dad's not gonna be in until tomorrow."

"Dad's a busy man."

Virgil gets a second shot off before John manages his, a bullseye in his usual fashion. John's misses the mark. "I'd put money on it that he pushes it back another day still. That's a prediction I'd make."

"Christmas Eve, you mean." John's quiet for a moment, lowers his rifle to glance at his brother, still staring intently down the barrel at his next target. His voice puffs in the air, he's a little out of breath. John sighs, adds a cloud of his own breath to the cold winter air. "Yeah, well, I wouldn't take that bet."

Another gunshot, another bullseye. "He avoids us at the holidays."

"He avoids us at Christmas," John corrects, and makes his third shot. "And you know why."

"I don't see how it'll help to miss Mom without us. Helps if we all miss her together."

John takes his fourth and his fifth shots in short succession, a hit and a miss, he'd rushed to avoid having to comment. Virgil's put his gun down entirely. "You think it's a good idea that he'll sit in his office and drink alone rather than spend time with us?"

Another long sigh clouds the air and John shrugs, slings his rifle onto his back again. "You want him doing it here?" he asks, and it's firmly rhetorical. "I dunno, Virg. You've always gotten a better bead on these things than I have."

There's a grunt from Virgil, and two sharp retorts, two targets hit dead center. John's dug his ski poles into the soft white snow and gone striding off in the opposite direction, vanishing around a corner before Virgil's even gotten to his feet. It's a little hollow, the competition. It had always been something they'd done to impress their father, always his praise they were trying to earn.

He's not even going to be around to acknowledge that Virgil's the best shot out of the five of them. As he gathers up his own rifle, and hits the trail again, Virgil can't help but wonder what the point is.


	5. Accident

It's Gordon who pitches John into the pool, because he's gotten everybody else in the space of a week, and John's the only one he'd been waiting for. Even Grandma had gotten dunked, and Gordon had nearly had one of his ears yanked off by the family matriarch as she hauled him all the way to the shallow end for a lecture. Grandma Tracy had been on the swim team in her day, too.

Kayo, technically, had thrown Gordon in. Gordon still counts this as a win, seeing as how they'd both ended up in the water after her preemptive tackle, once she'd noticed the pattern of Gordon working his way through the family. Brains had been similarly forewarned, and approached Gordon during his morning swim, befitted with a lifejacket and oversized goggles, a lamb to the slaughter. Quite willing to be dunked, but given the number of electronics he carried around on a regular basis, unwilling to be surprised by a dunking. Gordon had given him an obliging shove into the shallow end.

So everyone's complicit when John gets down from '5 at the end of the week, and no one warns him. There's maybe a little bit of general Schadenfreude at play during the family barbecue, with the sun setting over Tracy Island. Scott's making drinks and Virgil on the grill. Alan's already staring at Gordon with a big, expectant grin from the far end of the pool, where he and Kayo are bouncing a beach ball back and forth.

John's taken up residence on one of the deck chairs, and he and Brains are playing a holographic game of 3D chess, projected helpfully by Max. This is a boring way to spend a summer evening, so Gordon smirks across the pool at Alan and clears his throat.

"Hey John," Gordon calls, and the way everyone else's head snaps up along with the redhead's indicates they all know exactly what's coming. "C'mere a minute."

John's only been on the ground for about half a day, and he still has that sort of bouncing lilt to his stride as he approaches. Gordon's sat by the poolside, his feet dangling in the water, already in swim-trunks and a loose tanktop. And he's had the phrase "sweep the leg" echoing in his head since he and Alan had watched _The Karate Kid_ earlier in the week, and it's just too tempting.

Except the concrete at the edge of the pool is damp, slick, and everything goes wrong. John's already losing his footing, skidding backwards as Gordon catches him by the back of the knees. The well-measured maneuver that should have been enough to send his brother well clear of the pool wall and into the deep water _doesn't_ , quite.

There's a godawful crack and John's suddenly a blur of limbs and falling. Gordon registers, a few seconds out of sync, that he's soaked from the splash that was a hundred and eighty pounds of John, hitting the water. And for the first time in his life he's frozen up.

By the time he claws forward through the three, four, five seconds by which he's fallen behind reality, Kayo's already knifing through the water from the shallow end. By the time he snaps into action, Alan might be just realizing what's happened, his blue eyes wide. There's a cloud of blood blooming in the water, and bright, blossom red on the pale concrete edge of the pool. No one else seems to have noticed there's a problem yet, as Gordon yells and plunges into the water after his older brother.

There's another beat of his heart as his eyes adjust below the water, at the sight of John, insensible and hanging face down, almost on the bottom of the pool. His hair is leeched of its warm tone in the blueness of the pool around them, and floats in a loose halo around his face, pale and blue, ghostly below the surface. The blood in the water is dark, billowing.

Gordon can't remember if he's ever hurt anyone like this before, accident or not, and guilt is seeping into his stomach, heavy like molten lead.

But there's no time for that. Dropping straight down, he beats Kayo to John, but only just. The normally crystal pool water is clouding with an alarming amount of red, and blood ribbons and threads around Gordon's arms as he gets ahold of John by the back of his t-shirt. Kayo's there a second later, and between the both of them they get on either side of John, and kick upward for the surface.

" _Virgil!_ " Gordon yells as soon as he breaks the surface, because whenever he kicks over into crisis response mode, it's always Virgil who's his backup.

It's not Virgil, but Alan who's waiting at the pool edge. Alan's tiny and skinny and John outweighs him by nearly a third of his teenaged bodyweight, but he was closest. The youngest member of the family grits his teeth, determined, and helps haul John up, onto solid ground.

There's water already running from John's nose, his mouth, and Alan's palms are bright, bloody red as he cradles his big brother's head in his hands. John's always ranked just a step below Neil Armstrong in Alan's books. Gordon can't help feeling that leaden guilt in his stomach at the look on his baby brother's face, hardening through him, freezing him solid again. Some reflex has him grab John's wrist, but he can't even make his fingers find a pulse.

Kayo's the one who takes over, efficient and cold-eyed and clinical–she's always been just about impossible to rattle–and she's gently tilting John's chin up, levering his jaw open, leaning in to try and hear him breathing. "Alan–" she starts, as she presses one of John's arms across his chest, but Alan's already pulled John's wrist away from Gordon, tucking it gently underneath his cheek.

The change in posture as Kayo gently turns John onto his side is what does it; there's a jerk of his torso and a choked cough, and then he's vomiting pool water. It's an alarming amount for only have been in the water for about half a minute, but there's a harsh, stuttering gasp at the end of it. " _There_ we go," Kayo murmurs, and she exhales deeply, her hand rubbing over John's back as he continues to choke on air. "Come on, John, big breaths."

Scott's there now, close but not too close–it's already crowded around the edge of the pool, and plainly Kayo and Alan have things in hand. Gordon is just sort of… _there_ , crouching in front of his brother, staring and numb and not looking up to meet Scott's eyes. Grandma's gone inside for the first aid kid. Brains is at Max's data console, pulling up medical reference with Virgil stood behind him, conferring. Almost absently the middle child picks up a folded towel and tosses it to Kayo.

She doubles it over and presses it firmly to the back of John's scalp, her fingers probing his skull carefully, gently looking for any damage beyond the gash in his scalp. "No break that I can tell, but get Max over here with his x-ray attachment," she mentions, and wipes her bloodied palm on John's t-shirt. "Uh, sorry."

John's long fingers spasm, clench against the fabric of the t-shirt plastered to his chest, the concrete beneath his head. His knuckles scrape on the ground and Alan presses a hand down on top of his older brother's, the other catching his shoulder to hold him still. His palms are still red with John's blood and he's bent over, peering anxiously at his brother's face, his flickering eyelids. Alan's voice is smaller than he likes it to be when he prompts, "John? Hey, John? You hear me?"

"…hhhhk." There's another spate of coughing, another flood of pool water and then he's staring fuzzily right at Gordon, blinking and dazed. John's usually hard to read, but he's been knocked firmly off-guard and he's visibly concerned as he registers the panic on the faces above him. "..ow. Nn. Okay. 'm. I'm okay. A-Alan? Gordy. _Ow_ , though."

"Stay still," Kayo advises, even as John starts pushing himself up on his elbow. "John? You hit your head, take it easy."

Gordon finally finds his voice and manages, sounding more like a child than Alan, even,"Oh, god, John. I'm sorry. Johnny?"

"H-hey. It's okay. I'm just a klutz, was just an accident." Typical John. His big brother forces a weak, shaky grin. "What d'you call me, Gord? W-wobbly space-dork. Heh. Guess it's true."

No one explains until later why this makes Gordon break down bawling.


	6. Humanity

There's a forest fire in northern Colorado, and John breaks down in the middle of it.

It's a bad one–they're all bad, but this one is the worst he can remember–a sudden shift of wind has altered the course of the blaze, sent it roaring backwards towards the crews on the ground that are fighting it. The exhaustion, the sheer weariness in the voices of the firefighters turning to stark terror, panic.

Gordon and Virgil are there, Virgil having rigged Thunderbird 2 for aerial firefighting, and Gordon coordinating other air tankers from atop TB4, floating at the lake surface. Their voices are clipped, terse with the same tension and weariness, and Virgil curses a blue streak when the wind shifts and Gordon groans softly over the radio. They're not winning this fight, and it's time to start thinking about evac.

Priority one–there's a small party of firefighters, cut off on all sides by the roaring inferno, and John can hear them. He's divided himself mentally, segmented into pieces of himself, multi-tasking. He's got algorithms charting the path of the fire according to updated weather reports, he's got Gordon and Virgil chattering in the background as they start to reconfigure TB2 to extract the ground crews. EOS, ever present, is filtering data as it comes in, processing it down to the essentials before it's displayed, his first line of defense against the white noise of extraneous information. There are timers and projections mapping themselves out, and John's brain is still in pieces when the screaming starts, and fuses him back together.

Gordon and Virgil can't hear it, because John knows it won't help them work. But these people are burning, in a hellish agony of heat and terror and John can't cope with it, he _can't_ , he had TB2 en route, ready for pick up. He isn't even sure how he missed the sudden shift, how the fire could have swept up and engulfed the clearing. But it has, and the screaming won't stop, even after it does.

John chokes, numb and shocked and horrified, and manages, "EOS, cut all feeds. Clear channels. One minute downtime, _now_. Hail TB2 and 4, I need–I need to stop."

"My calculations indicate we are still short of mission compliance, and delays will affect–"

" _Cut the feeds."_

He's already hauled himself upward, out of the comm module, to find the nearest corner of wall in the gravity ring and wedge himself into it, voices still screaming in his head as he buries his fingers in his hair and the last of his composure gives way to panic; freezing, icy terror and shock. He doesn't know where he is or what's happening or why the noise won't stop, he's disoriented and agitated and by the time he registers EOS, softly repeating his name, it's been an hour.

"John?"

"I'm here," is all he manages to mumble, the noise in his head having given way to a migraine and his eyes red and raw as he stares blankly at the readouts. "I–oh, god. I don't know–I…what happened? EOS? I–"

"The mission has been completed, compliance at a rate of eighty-nine percent. There were three casualties. Relief crews from the GDF have taken over. Gordon and Virgil are on return approach to Tracy Island."

None of this answers his question, though it should have. "I can't remember what–"

"Biometric readouts indicate a period of acute stress reaction. Secondary trauma by emergency personal is not uncommon. In your absence I have superseded essential functionality and relayed the appropriate data to mission personnel. The mission is completed."

 _Panic attack_. "EOS, you–if you hadn't been here–" John buries his face in his hands and continues to fail to process what's happened. "I…thank you. Thank you, EOS, I couldn't–it was just too much, and I–"

"You were too human. Humanity calls to humanity. It is a bug and not a feature."

For the first time, there's a note of compassion in the AI's tone–compassion for _him_ , and not for the people who had been screaming, burning, _dying_ on the surface of the earth below. EOS has the ability to toggle this on and off. John doesn't. And not for the first time, he's jealous of that cold, binary rationality.


	7. Delirious

Gordon's three miles upriver in Central Vietnam, separated from TB4 and lost in the jungle, and Scott can't get him to stop singing Happy Birthday to himself. It's not Gordon's birthday, but that's the least of their problems at the moment.

There'd been a landslide, and it had dammed the river. Floodwaters were rising and threatening nearby villages, and Virgil and Gordon had answered the call. Straightforward grunt work, nothing too complicated. The river itself was the fastest passable route up to the site of the landslide, and after being dropped off, Gordon had taken TB4 upstream to start clearing the debris. The jungle around was too dense for access via pod, and Gordon had been left to deal with the cleanup himself. Virgil had been called away to help reinforce dykes outside the nearest of the villages.

Without Virgil for backup, it's slow going. They'd been at it for nearly three days when Virgil had called Scott, concerned about Gordon. Readouts from his suit have him running a low-grade fever, though whether it's illness or just the unremitting jungle heat, Virgil's not sure. But Gordon's been growing steadily less responsive via comm, and Virgil can't leave the village as it is–waters are still rising, and he has to be prepared to evacuate the citizens to higher ground if things start to look bad.

By the time Scott gets there, Gordon's communicator has gone entirely silent, and Virgil's right on the edge of panic. Scott blames himself, because Scott always does, though reasonably there was no one else who could have taken Gordon's place. Thunderbird 4′s highly specialized–but when it's necessary it's very, _very_ necessary. Discovering Gordon's 'bird abandoned by the riverside with the landslide only have cleared had been a jarring, terrifying shock. Remote-activating Gordon's GPS tracker and discovering him three miles upstream had been worse.

When he'd swooped in, the telltale sound of TB1′s engines reverberating through the jungle below, the holocomm in the cockpit had flared to life and–Gordon. Sort of.

"Heeeeyy, brother. Haha. Scotty. Hi, Scott. You found me. Peekaboo."

His voice is high and thin and even via hologram he looks _terrible_. His face is pale and he's undone the neck of his suit, and Scott can see sweat coating his brother's face, his throat. He's grinning, but not his usual cavalier smile–it's a pained, manic rictus of a grin, and his eyes are bright, unfocused.

"Gordon. Gordon, what's your status? Are you hurt?" _Infection. Some sort of infection for sure, the water's gotta be filthy and he's never as careful as he should be. Typhoid, maybe cholera, if his vaccines aren't up to date I'm going to shake him until his stupid head comes off. "_ Gordon?"

"Scotty. I'm lost in the park, _again_." Slightly hysterical laughter, trailing off into broken sobbing. "Is mom there? Where's mom? She said I wasn't supposed to go too _far_ , Scotty–" A long, shuddering sigh. "And it's my _birthday_."

Scott winces. That had been a bad birthday, the one Gordon remembered best. It had been a family barbecue, and he'd wandered away from the picnic, and he'd only been six. They'd spent an hour looking for him and he'd been hysterical the way only six year olds can be, when they'd finally found him.

The fact that his little brother is sick enough to be delirious has Scott's jaw clenched, his lips pressed in a grim line, and his brain rattling off a long list of every illness his brother could possibly have contracted in the dense Vietnamese jungle. "Hang on, Gordon. I'm coming to get you."

The answer is just tremulous singing.

Thunderbird One is right on top of him, hovering. Scott can see his brother's heat signature on infrared, but the jungle canopy is thick and dense, and he's not sure if Gordon will be capable of reaching it if he drops a cable. He certainly isn't sure he trusts him to hang on.

"Gordy. Gordon, kiddo. I need you to listen to me. Can you hear me, Gordon?"

"…Dad?"

 _Oh boy_. "N-yeah. Yeah, Gordy. Can you get up?"

"Mmm. Mmhmm. I'm up." Then a crash of foliage and a pained groan and more of that awful, disconnected laughter. "And I'm down!"

" _Stay there_ ," Scott orders sternly, and keys in the commands for auto-pilot.

He's careful, on the way down through the canopy, he takes the extra minute to saw through particularly hazardous branches. By the time he breaks through the lower boundary and spots the bright flash of blue and yellow, his heart's in his throat with worry for Gordon.

Gordon, almost impossibly, looks worse in person. His toolbelt is gone, his wetsuit is torn open and a gash in his side is trickling blood. He's bright-eyed and pale and glistening with sweat, but he stumbles to his feet and throws his arms wide when Scott gets close enough to jump down.

"Welcome to the party, Scott!" Gordon manages, before his big brother gets his arms around his torso, and he's suddenly limp, sagging against Scott in exhaustion. "Too much cake," he mumbles and then he's out like a light, and his face against Scott's fingers is blazing hot to the touch.

 _Some party_ , Scott thinks, heaving his little brother's arm over his shoulder, and clipping a carabiner from the cable line onto his own belt, getting a secure hold on Gordon before he starts their ascent. _Happy birthday, you moron._


	8. Alliance

It's an almost impossible turn of events, when Scott and his family's arch-nemesis have the same thing at stake.

IR was too late to stop him, despite their best efforts, and now there's a hydro dam in Malaysia that's on the brink of failure, and Scott and Kayo are running for the exit, escape their only remaining option.

 _Hopefully_ it remains as their only option. Scott's not sure they'll make it out anymore. When the catwalk above the turbines had started to groan and creak with the pressures of the failing structure all around them, Scott had turned to Kayo to get her ahead of him, closer to the relative safety of solid ground at the end of the bridge. The metal of the cat walk is buckling, and the man responsible has stumbled, foiled in his pursuit by his foot, snagged in the grille. His eyes are golden, wild and manic, and he's frothing, screaming at them both.

But she'd already turned, and run back the way they came–back towards their pursuer, back towards the Hood.

Their instincts are different. Scott's voice gives him away before he realizes what he's saying, and he shouts " _Leave him!_ " before he can think better of it. International Rescue was founded on the principle that everyone deserves to be saved, regardless of circumstance. Scott's never known a scenario where that's not applicable before now. He wonders if any one of his brothers would have turned back, to help the man who'd been hounding their family since the day he'd taken their father from them.

But it's Kayo. And seeing the pair of them side by side, there are questions about the Hood and Tanusha Kyrano that have long been unanswered, but now's not the time to ask them.

The catwalk jolts, bucking downward and Scott latches onto the side of it, even as Kayo flings herself forward, to her knees on the ground beside the Hood. Scott can see her shout something to him, as she wrenches at his ankle, but her voice is lost over the roar of the turbines below, whirring faster and faster past the point of overloading.

"Kayo, _come on_!" he shouts again, and pulls out a cable clip and his grapple pack. He fires one shot forward and it lands with a crunch, embedding into the concrete platform at the end of the catwalk. He clips this to his belt, loads and readies another, to shoot across the gap if the bridge really starts to go. The Hood is still screeching, and Scott's never encountered the man in person before. He'd never realized that the phantom haunting his family may actually be insane. Kayo's unsnagged his foot from the catwalk, and Scott beckons to her again, as there's another lurch. The cable clipped to his belt snaps taught as he drops downward, losing nearly five feet of altitude with a dizzying clench of his stomach. "Kayo!"

This time she turns, leaves the Hood to scramble backwards, away from her, back the way they came. Getting antsy, Scott fires the second shot, but it goes wide, catches on the tumbling catwalk instead of the solidity behind it. Kayo only just manages to get enough purchase on the bridge to catch it in her gloved palms. The left side of it twists, gives way beneath her, before she can swing her legs upward to take more of her weight. She yells something, but the roar of wind and power beneath them has only grown louder, and Scott can't hear her. She doesn't hear him as he tells her to hold on, though the strain of the grapple on his hand is painful, almost too much.

The Hood has cleared the bridge entirely, back on the far side. His shoulders are broad, heaving, and those eyes are bright with fury as he stares at Kayo, dangling by her hands over the roaring turbines. His eyes tear away from her and Scott can't resist their magnetic pull upward, as blue and gold lock across the distance.

The hook end of the grapple embedded in the metal grate isn't enough. The bridge twists, jerks again, and on Scott's side of the chasm, detaches almost entirely. He's hanging by the clip on his belt now, and the jerk of the grapple gun in his hand nearly yanks it from his grasp as he feeds more cable to compensate.

And the look in the eyes of the man across the gap says all too plainly that he knows Scott can't hold on. That Kayo will fall in mere moments. Scott isn't sure what passes between them in that instant of connection–but the Hood looks down, at the bridge on his side, still holding. He steps from the safety he's reached, half sliding, half climbing down the bridge, and undoes the grapple. It jerks in Scott's hand again–the man is shockingly strong–and he returns to the farside, clipping the hook, secure, onto a bollard rooted in concrete.

The cable snaps taught, and Scott eases just a foot or more of length out of the winch, and then splices the two lengths of cable together, secure. Kayo's already swinging her way towards him, hand over hand, as Scott watches the Hood vanish back into the facility, tearing itself to pieces around them. The turbines below them are screaming now, things are really falling apart.

When he and Kayo get clear, he's not sure if he wants to know the answers to the questions he finds himself asking.


	9. Perseids

John can drive, but Alan's the one driving. Kansas, wheat-fields gold below the horizon and the arc of the sky cerulean above. It's summer, August and the family always makes this journey piecemeal, never everybody all together.

The last time the whole family had been together at their mother's graveside had been before their father had gone missing. Without Jeff, the boys can't quite seem to stand it, all five of them in the same place, grieving all over again.

So they make the pilgrimage two or three times a year, singly, or in pairs or triads. Scott and Virgil have an annual camping trip once a year and stop by then. One or the other of them will usually bring Grandma, usually around Thanksgiving. Gordon insists on going alone and no one bugs him about it. Brains has been once, with Virgil. He'd never met Lucille, but it seemed important to him to pay a quiet homage to the boys' mother, after they'd become his second family. John always goes with Alan, always early in August.

The Tracys still own the farm, though what was formerly sixty acres has dwindled down to five, and the fields around it lie fallow and wild. Automated tractors prowl over the soft swells of the aureate hills, harvesting. There's the whine of cicadas in the air, when Alan pulls the rented sedan up to the driveway of Grandpa Tracy's old farm and parks. John has the keys in his bag, but they won't spend the night inside.

Their mom is buried beneath a willow tree, on a low hill that looks over the pond behind the farmhouse. Alan and John don't talk much as they unload the car, sleeping bags, a cooler full of food. John's brought a book. Alan's brought his telescope, formerly John's telescope, formerly their mother's telescope.

There's a shed behind the house and without much discussion, the boys retrieve a pair of rakes, work gloves, garden shears, trowels. A few years ago during their springtime visit, Virgil and Grandma had put in a garden. It's all annuals, nothing too rigid or formal, just something to brighten up the hill around the pale marble stone. Wild flowers have crept up from the base of the hill, gem-like and bright in the coarse summer grass.

Scott and Virgil have their hunting trip in the spring, a long ago ritual that their grandfather had started when they were boys, passed down from their father's own childhood. John's never been, he'd refused point blank the first time the invitation was offered, and Virgil had gone in his stead. No one's quite sure which half of the trip is the detour any longer–the week spent camping at a lakeside in Northern Kansas, or the visit to their mother's grave. Alan's asked to go along before, but only once–and he'd been gently turned down. John had been the one who'd explained it; it's something between Scott and Virgil, the same way the stars are between him and the youngest.

Alan chatters lightly while they work, pulling the most egregious weeds and trimming the shrubs and bushes to make room for new growth in the spring. Probably Gordon will be back around Christmas–the winter months always seem to call him here, though cold weather bothers him more than any of his brothers. John almost can't imagine this place in the winter, bare and cold and lonely, the willow tree draped in ghostly white frost, its branches black and raw. It's sadder still to think of Gordon all alone out here, bundled up with his own grief, something he's never shared, nor wanted to. But it's how he wants things, and he's always been left to it. In the spring there'll be a broken bottle of seawater, frozen until it's cracked, then thawed and melted into the earth, and a light scattering of sand from the beach at the base of the stone. It's a funny little ritual of Gordon's.

They're hard at it til sundown, and then they picnic in the summer grass as night starts to fall and the lightning bugs come out, heralding the rise of the stars from the gloaming darkness of the eastern sky. John's more animated than usual, Alan more subdued, but the pair of them have always balanced each other out. They talk about home and growing up and memories, John's sharp clear ones and Alan's vague muddles of scents and flashes of places, sensations. It's melancholy but not quite sad. Not mournful any longer, but fond and bittersweet.

The moon is a waning crescent, and the sky darkens to the velvet black that John adores, as the stars cast the same sort of unchallenged light that they cast over Tracy Island. Crickets sing and tiny green frogs peep in the pond, and the wind in the wheat-fields and over the grass is cool. John and Alan are lying side by side on the northward slope of the hill, looking skyward, talk dwindling as midnight passes. Alan is the one who nudges John awake, around 2 AM.

Overhead the Perseids reach their peak, arcs of pure white across the heavens, and John and Alan watch them with their mother, the way they always have.


	10. Low Gravity

"…John, honestly, the truth is just that he's getting to be too much to handle down here. He made your grandmother cry last week and Scott hasn't spoken to him since. Virgil and Alan are hitting their limits, and I'm doing my best, but–"

Jeff trails off and shakes his head. John winces at the stress in his father's voice. He's really not sure he's up for this, but it's the very least he can do. "Well, if you think it'll help, I'm certainly willing to try. Have you asked Gordon?"

"Not yet." His father hesitates and his eyes are distant, sad and his voice is soft when he continues, "It's a lot to ask, John. If he can't push past this, it feels like it's going to break him."

"I didn't know it was that serious. He seemed fine the last time I was down. I guess…I guess it's been a while."

It's been three months since John's seen Gordon in person, and he didn't know things were really this bad. It's almost half a year since the actual crash. The day the whole family had clustered together in a private waiting room in one of the best hospitals in the world, sitting through that initial fifteen-hour surgery, the one ensuring that their mangled little brother would live. There'd been another dozen since then, half-cosmetic and half-reconstructive, to ensure that Gordon would walk again. This is still a work in progress, and it's slow going. Gordon's been a natural athlete his entire life, and having to relearn how to use his entire body is harder on him than anyone could have expected.

But the answer whenever John asked about how the second-youngest was doing had always been "Oh, fine" and he'd never asked for any more than that, even though it seemed too vague to really be an answer. He's really not done his part, where Gordon's concerned.

And there are reasons, but they feel like excuses. After the accident, after the initial shock of fear and preemptive grief that had taken them all off work, John had stepped into his father's place as primary rather than secondary dispatch. Gordon, after all, needed their Dad more than the rest of the world did. The family's first tragedy had been enough to teach them that life didn't just stop and wait for those who'd been bereaved.

The first couple of weeks had been the most stressful of his entire life, but then something had clicked into place, and he'd gotten _good_ at it. Thunderbird 5 could handle the volume of calls easily and instead of their father's voice over the line, it had been John's, relaying all the information that had usually come secondhand from their father. Even down two members and with an ecstatic Alan subbed in on Pod duty, International Rescue still ran like a well-oiled machine. The busyness that came with being a man down, that was an excuse.

But his dad wants his job back. And it's about time John did more than the bare minimum, for Gordon.

"If he can't handle the trip in '3, I'll be geosynchronous again in two days to drop the elevator," he says finally. "If you can talk him into it, he's more than welcome."

"Thank you, John. I hope the time away will do him good."

"FAB, Dad."

 _I only hope I can help him._

* * *

Gordon's nineteen to John's twenty-five, and the gap's never felt bigger than it does when the space elevator docks and the airlock opens and there's his little brother, hanging in the absence of gravity, awkward in zero-G the way John is in deep water.

"Welcome aboard, Gordon." John's already off his guard at the sight of him, his first impression is that Gordon looks thin, unhealthily so, and arrestingly young. He's not in uniform, and John's glad, because even his civilian clothes hang off him. His face has gotten drawn, narrow, and there are circles beneath his eyes, highlighted by the protruding ridges of his cheekbones.

John's never had his father's knack for keeping his emotions from playing across his face, and Gordon's eyes harden as they meet his brother's stare. "What?" he starts, and though he's got the same old joking grin and lightness to his tone, there are still those agate-hard eyes. "Looking for the wheelchair?"

The last time John had seen him had been for his nineteenth birthday, and Gordon had still been in the wheelchair, then. He'd been hopeful, then, ready to start getting better. Obviously the last three months have changed things. So Gordon's been out of the wheelchair and on to crutches for months, but he hasn't progressed any further than that. Part of what their father hoped was that a low-impact, low gravity environment might help he get some of his confidence back, warm him up to the idea of physical therapy.

"You shouldn't need it up here," John hazards, kicks off the wall to offer his brother some help up through the main passage and into the station proper. He's dialed the gravity way down to be easier on his brother, hopefully more like swimming. He's been led to understand that Gordon hasn't been back in the pool since picking up an infection after his last surgery.

"Right. Yeah, well, that'll be a bonus. You gonna give me the tour, John?"

John offers a slightly wry smile. "It's a short tour, but sure. I'll show you around. Did you want to–" he pauses, careful of his phrasing. The last thing in the world he wants to do is treat Gordon like he's delicate, but at the same time, he just looks so tired– "–the ride up is a little rough, sometimes, did you want to take a break at all?"

Again with those stony brown eyes, throwing John off. "No," he declines firmly and ignores the hand John's held out, grabbing onto the upper lip of the airlock door and hauling himself through. "I want to get to work."

* * *

John can't remember the last time he's been in his civvies aboard the station and he tugs awkwardly at the collar of his shirt, light blue, thermal, not _quite_ warm enough for TB5 compared to his pressure and temperature regulated uniform. Beyond that, it just feels unprofessional.

But then, technically he isn't working. John's ceded to the presence of company (and Jeff's order) and taken TB5 mostly offline. He's got basic comms and a line to the Island, but the global comm module is dark. He has a console running diagnostics and performing maintenance, rebooting systems and reformatting assorted drives, but otherwise, he's taking the week off.

Unlike Gordon.

Jeff had warned him about the mood swings, about the depression and the temper and the fact that Gordon just isn't really himself these days. None of this had happened so far. And what John _hadn't_ been warned of was the grim ferocity with which Gordon would throw himself into the routine suggested by his doctor. He'd submitted to a brief tour of the station, and allowed John to bully him into a light meal and a day to get acclimated to the environment. But then he'd fished a holographic tablet out of his bag, thrust it at John, and told him to dial up the gravity to half-Earth, and supervise.

Gordon's only in a t-shirt and track pants, and he's sweating visibly. He's been at it for a few hours now, though it's all been relatively low impact–stretches and minor weight training, whatever exercises his older brother calls out as part of the sequence.

John's not really sure how he's supposed to be helping, outside of moral support, and an occasional helping hand with resistance stretching. Otherwise he's just drifting companionably nearby, while his little brother works himself into exhaustion. John stifles a shiver and his eyes flicker over the temperature readouts in the gravity ring. "You want it a bit warmer in here, Gord?" he asks.

"No. Rack the gravity up," is the terse answer.

The gravity's already higher than John would have preferred, for his brother's sake. "Uh. You know, maybe it's time for a break–" John starts, and then _there's_ the flare of temper he'd been warned about.

"I'm not up here for a _break_ , John." Gordon sits up and he's glaring, hard-eyed and furious and John's not sure why. "You _know_ why Dad sent me, and if I'm gonna be here, then I'm saying _screw him_. I don't want your stupid job, and if I can't walk by the time I'm back on the ground, then–"

John blinks and sets the tablet aside, interrupting. "My job? What about my job?"

"I don't _want_ your job," Gordon snarls. "That's why he sent me, isn't it? Because if I'm not gonna be good for anything else, then he's gonna stick me up here and make you train me for–for _dispatch_."Gordon spits the word out like its filthy and his hands clench into fists at his sides.

This is news to John and he's still on the back foot, uncertain. "I–Gordon, this is the first I'm hearing of anything like that. Dad said you needed a break, I thought–"

Gordon scoffs and pulls his knees up against his chest, hunching over. "Oh, right. _I_ need the break; I can barely _do_ anything, what do I need with a break? They wanted a break from _me_ and all my stupid damage, so Dad shot me into orbit."

 _Oh._ "I don't think that's why–" John begins, gently, but there's no easing Gordon off. He drifts to sit down on the floor, the curve of the earth distant and bright below them. It's always made John feel better, just to sit and watch the world go by. He wonders idly if Gordon's even paid it any attention.

"Don't _lie_ to me, Johnny. I'm crippled, but I'm not stupid."

John winces at the anger, the self-directed hatred in his brother's voice. "You're not crippled, Gordon. Dad's just–I mean, he just wants you to get some confidence back. I know the therapy thing is hard. It's supposed to be easier on you up here."

" _None of this is easy!_ "

 _Oh gosh, here we go._ John shifts to sit a little closer to Gordon, doesn't quite look at him. This isn't really his area. Virgil's the one with the sensitive soul, Scott's the one with the natural charisma. Alan's the one who'll always believe in his older brothers. John–well. John's pretty good at listening. Sometimes that's the trick. Just letting people talk.

Gordon's not happy in silence and he's not looking up either. He's staring down at his hands, at his legs sprawled out, long and gangly, all the muscle melted off him. Gordon, who'd won an Olympic Gold medal only a year ago, dwindled down until he looks skinnier than Alan, three years his junior. He's only nineteen. Only two years out of highschool, not even allowed to _drink_ yet. Of course it isn't easy.

"It's not going to be good enough," he mumbles finally, his hands clenching. "Everyone keeps telling me I'll get back to normal, but I won't. I won't–I won't ever get past some of it. There's places that are going to hurt for the rest of my life, and it doesn't matter how hard I try, I'm never gonna set another record, never gonna _compete_ again. What's the point? Why even bother?"

John pauses, just long enough for Gordon to decide he doesn't want to hear anything his older brother might have to say anyway. "And I don't want to…to stop piloting '4. I don't want to be up here because I'm not strong enough for anywhere else. John, this is _your_ life, not mine. I couldn't stand it. I don't know how _you_ stand it, not being in the middle of the action, not making a real _difference_. If I can't help people, what good am I?"

Tentatively, John reaches over, rests a hand on his brother's shoulder. "I don't think you're done yet, Gordon," he says quietly, rubbing lightly at the tension all across Gordon's back. "If you only ever make it back to fifty-percent, it's still a hell of a lot more than some people's hundred."

The way Gordon's stiffened at his brother's touch, the way he seems almost resistant, makes John realize that maybe nobody touches him like this anymore. Maybe everybody's too worried about how broken he was, makes them remember all those months when he couldn't be touched, all broken bones and bruises and the phantom pain of nerve damage. John hasn't had the opportunity to learn not to touch Gordon. So he scoots closer and wraps his little brother up in a warm, gentle hug.

There's a slow inhalation of breath from the blond, and he seems unsure what to do with his own arms, even as John cinches his grasp snug around Gordon's waist, lifts a hand to clasp his shoulder. And then, finally, Gordon sags into the embrace and his voice cracks, even as John feels damp tears rolling over the back of his hand on Gordon's shoulder. "Johnny, it was just supposed to get better by now. I can't beat this, I don't know _how_ to beat it. I-I don't w-want to let everyone down."

"You're not."

"It's hard and I'm scared."

"I know, Gordon. I'm sorry. I know it's hard."

"I wish this never happened. I wish _none_ of it had happened."

John's hug tightens and he nods into his little brother's shoulder, verging on tears himself. "Me too, Gord. If it could've been me instead, I'd have taken it." He swallows and says the thing he should have said a long time ago, "I'm sorry I haven't done more. I knew you were hurting and I buried myself in work instead of helping you. If I can help, Gordon, if you just want to stay up here and talk or rest or anything–if you want to keep at this therapy stuff, if there's anything I can do…just say so."

Gordon doesn't answer immediately, but after a few moments he lifts a hand and awkwardly pats John's hair. He sniffles tiredly. "M'sorry I yelled. Thanks. Thank you, Johnny. It…I got a lot to get off my chest and it's hard at home. With everybody always hanging around cheering me on–I don't ever wanna fail them, but sometimes I have to give up a bit. It's worse than when Mom died, even, sometimes. This is all so…it's…it's heavier than anything I've ever had to deal with."

John manages to swallow back the threatening tears and nods, even as he loosens his hold on his brother. He offers a weak chuckle. "Heh. Well, that's why the gravity's turned down."

"Oh my god, John, that was terrible even by your standards."

John grins, even as the mood starts to lighten. "Yeah, well, if you wanna work up here, you can't have a sense of humor. Rule one. Serious business only aboard Thunderbird 5."

"Oh right, 'serious business', uh huh," This gets a derisive snort (disguising a sniffle) out of Gordon, even as he pulls away and leans back against the subtle curve of the ring below him. He shifts and nudges John's knee with his foot, loops his hands behind his neck to do some sit-ups. "What do you even _do_ up here all day?"

"Mostly Tetris."

"Oh, well, I'm _lousy_ at Tetris."

"Well, then I guess you won't be taking my job any time soon, because it's like sixty-five percent Tetris." John locks his hands around his brother's ankles and starts to help him count off a few sets of sit-ups.

Gordon grunts, pulls himself through the first sit-up. They _are_ easier in microgravity. It's about time his life got a little easier, just a little. "What's the other thirty-five percent?"

John smiles. "Listening."


	11. hours lost in late night talks

"Coffee isn't sleep, Scott."

"The nonsense you do isn't sleep, either."

The voice is disembodied at first, dark as it is on the island at midnight, it's generally considered courtesy not to flare up with a full strength hologram in the hours past darkness. So John fades into existence on the couch beside Scott, the light that comprises his presence brightening slowly so Scott's eyes can adjust.

It's a clever trick, the approximation of John's presence. It only happens four times a day, when he's perched at the edge of his own bed, high overhead in Thunderbird Five, preparing to meditate before he lies down for the half hour bursts of sleep that seem to sustain him over six hour periods. It's a cobbled together schedule that he's based off the habits of fighter pilots, astronauts, and those who've crossed oceans, solo, in tiny craft that move by wind-power alone. John sails the stars, by himself, and sleeps in brief, tightly controlled bursts, calculated and trained to maximum efficiency.

"It's called polyphasic sleep. And until world crises keep a regular schedule , then I'm going to continue to do things my way, thank you." There's a slight shift of John's image, and he clips through the couch a little, but it's still nice as he leans back and looks tired himself. "You're the one who needs to put down the caffeine. You're not cleared to fly again until you've had at least eight hours, and given the projections for typhoon season this year, it'd be best if you got them ASAP."

Scott grins and swallows a cup of hot chamomile tea. "Not coffee, actually. Chamomile and mint. What, I can't wind down?"

The huff of scoffing breath from John is so familiar that Scott would almost swear the redhead is really there. "It's just you _don't_ usually."

Scott's about to answer, but John _yawns_ , a hand coming up to cover his mouth, and suddenly older brother is squinting at younger, at a hologram he doesn't usually see in this high a resolution, this close. Seeing the shadows beneath his eyes, the way his suit's undone at the collar, loosened. The way his gloved fingertips press against his closed eyes, rubbing them and sighing. "-you gonna be okay, coasting on half hour naps for the duration of typhoon season?"

"Maybe. Probably. I have before." John's eyes narrow at the mug in Scott's hand, trailing wisps of steam into the air. "Are you gonna be taking the requisite twelve hours down, considering there's a bottle of whiskey on the table behind you, and if you're telling me that's supposed to be chamomile tea then I'll eat my helmet."

"It's a hot toddy, courtesy of Grandma. I was spotting Gordon in the North Atlantic for eight hours. Apparently I seem tense. It's about half chamomile tea, half Jack, half honey."

"That's three halves."

"It's a big mug." Scott takes a long swallow and sags against the couch, unwinding limbs that are just as long and limber as his brother's, but are burdened by four more years of age, a long day in freezing cold weather, and gravity. "Go snag your helmet, I'll wait."

John's answering grin is rare, the sort of dry humour that he and Scott so rarely share, ribbing each other. "Yeah, I'll take a raincheck until I have empircal proof that there's any tea in there at all."

"Don't make me come up there."

"Yeah, right, like I'd let you in. Your gear isn't space-rated, you'd probably wear those stupid fingerless gloves of yours and decompress your flightsuit."

Scott just laughs and sighs, contented. "Get some sleep, John."

"Get some sleep, Scott," is the answer, another late-night rarity, John mimicking Scott the same way Alan mimicks John. And then a brief pause. "Good night, Scott," he offers, in the way that Alan says good night to him, when the youngest puts in his last call to TB5 for the night.

"Good night, John," Scott answers, and raises his mug.


	12. Movie CPR

I still believe in Movie CPR.

I mean, not the way they do it, they get _that_ all wrong. No one breaks ribs like they need to, there's no one-way valves and blue neoprene gloves, though I guess you go without both if you have to. Virgil won't do it without, maybe he needs that barrier.

Movie CPR stays sexy, somehow, I guess maybe because it's always some pretty young creature who needs it, and somehow never someone you've just fished out of cold water, despite the fact that he weighs as much as two of you and was probably headed for some sort of coronary something anyhow. Someone who reminds you of a corpse more than he reminds you of a father, and then you get trapped in that hundred-compressions-a-minute cycle of the way corpses remind you of fathers, and how that's kind of fucked up, and maybe it's a selfish place for your brain to go; thinking about your dad when it's someone else's dad who needs you. But in the end it doesn't matter, because in the end you didn't save either of them.

Maybe it's about the way it looks. Maybe it's about the fact that you tried, did your best for the people looking on, crying and screaming and begging. Is it you or them who benefits, though, from that last ditch effort. Maybe that's why no one ever stops me. All of them know, every last one of them. Virgil still makes Al hang back, when it's really dire, but no one ever stops _me_. I don't think I'll ever ask, but they might know better than I do who I'm doing it for.

Purity of heart or purpose don't really factor into the calculation of the sort of stats that aren't heartening at all, when you know them. There's no little disclaimer where the subtitles belong, about the actual odds of saving a life. _Trying really hard_ hasn't ever counted for what I wish it did, outside those rare occasions where putting in the work just translates directly into actual achievement, no inverse decay of effort or time. Anybody could be a gold medalist if they just swam like a maniac for long enough.

Only that's not true and I know it's not true. Diminishing that One Big Thing I did doesn't take the edge off all the little things I fail to do, because the odds are stacked too high and no amount of trying really hard will ever count for anything.

Anyway. These are all just the sorts of things you think of, when your palms are cracking someone's sternum and you're just waiting for Scott to call you off. I feel like I've done this a million times. I recertify everything at least once a year, twice for the stuff that really matters. CPR, ironically, I re-up in spring and fall. Maybe I don't even do this right anymore, maybe I just know the way it looks in the movies.


	13. relative metrics of cleverness

Brains has learned the rhythm of the way the boys come down the stairs to the lab. Scott's one-two-one-two, Virgil's heavy stride. Gordon's rapid two-step, and Alan, galloping down the stairs like he's got urgent news. The only time John's had occasion to come down to the lab had been during the most recent spate of downtime, and he'd tripped three steps from the bottom and nearly broken his face. Generously, Brains has considered this occasion to be an outlier. So Brains has no reliable data for John.

And he's never actually heard Kayo come down the stairs. Kayo tends to appear out of nowhere, even though there's only one actual entrance to his lab.

But it's neither here nor there, because the footsteps coming down the stairs are Gordon's, a little too fast and nervewracking to listen to.

"Brains, can I bug you for a minute?"

Knowing Gordon (which admittedly he doesn't, at least not very well), it's likely to be more than a minute. It's likely to take him forever to get to the point, he's likely to meander through the subject and beat around the bush and make amiable small talk while Brains is trying to work. But, he works for the Tracys, and he's on the clock. "O-of course."

"Great! Cool, uh. So, it's about TB4, right? Which is _great_ , by the way, wish I got to take it out more often. Subs, you know, they're really finicky machines and-"

Brains has to start to outline the plan for a retrofit of TB1's engines. It's going to be a massive, expensive project, and complicated. He needs to have it on Jeff's desk by the end of the week. He really doesn't mean to be short when he prompts, "What about TB4?"

"Right! Right, uh. So, there's-you know, there's the thingy on the floor, right? Between the pedal doohickeys. So sometimes if I go down too fast, there's a thing that happens with the way it sticks, like it kinda gets sorta slow? Sticks a bit? I was just, uh, just wondering-"

He doesn't mean to heave a sigh, he really doesn't. It's a testament to how _irritating_ this is that he overcomes his nature and finds himself glaring at Gordon over the rims of his glasses. "M- _must_ you?" he demands and then regrets it immediately. " _Sorry_. Sorry, never mind. So the axial control is lagging. Does it feel like the hydraulics, or is there something g-gumming up the a-actual axis?"

"Uh. Well! So, there's that uh, that metal deal in the middle on the bottom of Four? I dinged the bottom off of a cliff last time I was out, and, like, I think maybe something...umm...like, got knocked kinda wonky or something, not that I-"

Brains doesn't snap very often, but he's had a very long day staring at speculative technical specs, and he'd rather wrangle with something concrete for a while. "G-Gordon. If you would s-spend as much effort explaining the actual problem as you do attempting to sound like an i-idiot then it would save me a l-lot of time."

Whoops. Gordon blinks at him and is momentarily derailed. "Uh..."

Well, he's in it now. "N-no! No more with the 'uhs' and the 'ums'! I don't know why y-you insist on pretending to be stupid whenever you d-discuss Thunderbird Four. I know you're not and it w-wastes my time."

Gordon's cheeks flush and he jams his hands in the pockets of today's board shorts (yellow with red magnolias), looks away and kicks his feet in their sandals. "Aw, man. Sorry. Sorry, I wasn't trying to...I dunno, s'just how you're the tech guy, and I'm...I mean, Virg is the engineer."

Brains sighs and tries to remember that his frame of reference is that of the brilliant only-child of genius parents. Gordon's had to compete with four brothers for his entire life, and knowing he's not the smartest of them, maybe it's a defensive reflex to aggressively be the dumbest. "Y-you have a Bachelor of Science in Marine Geology. I've read a few of your papers, you h-had a GPA of 3.7. I _know_ you're not stupid. I can't even i-imagine what p-purpose that serves."

"Oh." Gordon's just bright red now. "Well, I didn't _know_ you knew I wasn't stupid."

Brains pushes his glasses up to hide the roll of his eyes, and pulls up a notepad on his tablet and poises a pen to make a few notes. "What's wrong with Thunderbird Four?" he prompts again.

"The, uh-sorry, the actuator on the axial control's been knocked out of alignment and the hydraulics may've leaked into the mechanism. I hit the thermocline below two thousand meters before I realized there was a leak and the temperature change seems like it's separated the hydraulic fluid."

"Noted. N-not a difficult fix. Wasn't that easier?"

Gordon spreads his palms. "Look man, I'm just doing my thing. I won't do it again."

"W-why pretend?"

Gordon shrugs and grins a little awkwardly. His manner's already changed, the uhs and ums have dropped off the radar. "Social lubrication. Guess it's a reflex. I'm not as smart as my brothers, but I'm still a hell of a lot smarter than a lot of the people I went to school with. And, uh. Well, it's intimidating. You know? When you're the smart guy. I never liked intimidating people. John, you get him started on started on one of his nerd things and pretty quick he's left you in the dust, because he forgets not everyone's an astrophysicist. Virgil, he gets frustrated with anyone who can't disassemble an engine in their head the way he can, he'll throw up his hands and just leave. I dunno. I just always thought I'd rather be friendly than smart."

Brains shakes his head. "Well, please don't. There's nothing intimidating about your intelligence."

The grin widens and Gordon gives another shrug, taps the side of his nose. "It's possible," he suggests, and winks, "that I wasn't talking about me." He rocks for a moment on his heels and then gives a bit of a wave before turning back towards the stairs. "See ya 'round, Brains."


	14. Dearly Remembered

Shouted into the comm channel, over the roar of a yawning chasm beneath him, "GORDON COOPER TRACY DIED _TRAGICALLY_ TODAY, AS A RESULT OF HIS BROTHER VIRGIL'S _COMPLETE AND UTTER INCOMPETENCE_. "

"-Gordon-"

"HE LEAVES TO MOURN HIS _MARGINALLY MORE COMPETENT BROTHERS_ , SCOOTER, JOHNNY, AND ALAN, ALTHOUGH ALAN'S IN THE DOGHOUSE BECAUSE IT WAS HIS DUMB FAULT IN THE FIRST PLACE-"

"-Hey! It was _not_ -"

"CLEAR THE COMM CHANNEL PLEASE, ALAN, I AM DICTATING MY OBITUARY. JOHN, I HOPE YOU'RE GETTING ALL THIS."

There's a hiss of disapproving static from orbit. "Gordon, you're going to be fine."

Gordon's in an inverted mole pod, dangling below TB2, only just snagged by one of Virgil's grappling cables. They'd been tunneling. There'd been a cliff-face. Gordon had tunneled through it, because Virgil had made a minor miscalculation, regarding East vs West. It's consumately unfair, it had been Alan's turn for Pod Duty. He knows he'll be fine. He's still staring down onto the tops of trees below him, and it's a lousy feeling. He takes a deep breath.

"GORDON WILL BE REMEMBERED FONDLY BY ALL WHO KNEW HIM, FOR HIS IMPECCABLE DRESS SENSE, HIS RAZOR SHARP WIT, AND THAT TIME HE WON THE OLYMPIC GOLD MEDAL. GORDON STOOD HEAD AND SHOULDERS ABOVE HIS BROTHERS-"

"Not literally, of course."

"-AND DISOWNED HIS ELDEST BROTHER SCOTT AT THE VERY END OF HIS LIFE. THE FUNERAL WILL BE HELD ON TRACY ISLAND, IN GRAND VIKING TRADITION, PRESUMING THAT A BODY IS RECOVERED."

There's a sudden jerk and a jolt of vertigo and Gordon swears a blue streak.

" _Sorry_ ," Virgil drawls over the comm channel, "Sorry, Gordon, I was a bit distracted. Someone wouldn't quit shouting."

Gordon, duly reprimanded, shuts up.


	15. Instinct

It's something he's learned, but not something he was ever taught. You can teach protocols and process, but you can't teach raw instinct. They've all got it, him and his brothers, but Virgil's instincts border into the territory of a sixth sense, especially where his brothers are concerned.

He and Gordon are partnered for a rescue off the coast of Brazil, an old oil rig being hauled back to shore to be dismantled has broken loose of its towlines and is drifting off the coast, interfering with shipping lanes and in danger of capsizing. There's no one onboard, but the vessel itself poses a significant hazard if it's allowed to run aground, or if it drifts into the path of an oncoming ship.

Gordon's down in Thunderbird Four, attaching cables for TB2, hard links through the trusses and struts supporting the platform. Magnetic grapples won't be sufficient, and it's going to take all the muscle his 'bird has in order to haul the thing someplace it can safely be grounded.

The seas are rough, but Gordon's below the surface while Virgil hovers nearby. Anything water-related is usually Gordon's territory, and Virgil won't be able to say for sure just what tips him off. Tiny slivers of everything all at once, most probably. But the wind rises and he feels it through TB2′s controls, and the water around the base of the platform begins to swell. The thing's already unstable, and Virgil reacts before he actually knows what's going to happen, jamming a thumb down on his radio button. "Thunderbird Four. Dive _now_ , get far down and clear. It's going to flip."

There's a crackle of static over the comm, and then a crisp, "FAB." Even as the rig starts to topple, Virgil's already firing his engines, rising high and away and clear.

It's spectacular, if tragic, the sight of the old wreck teetering and then crashing into the water with an avalanche of white, briny foam. There'd have been alarms and signals if anything had happened to TB4, but Virgil still fiddles with the radio after an anxious few minutes. "…Thunderbird Four? Gordon. Come in, Gordon. What's your status?"

There's another burst of interference–the weather isn't doing them any favours–and then a slightly hysterical laugh from Gordon. Below him, Virgil can see the flash of TB4′s yellow hull as his brother surfaces. "… _that_ was a close one. Hah. Hahahaha. _Ha_. Wow. Okay. I'm an idiot. Good call, Virge. I didn't even–"

"It's okay, Gordon. I didn't either." And, shaken himself but glad to have his brother around to confess to, Virgil grins a little as he admits, "Just caught a bit of your squid sense."

Gordon's answering laugh is slowly losing its hysterical edge. "Next time, get your _own_."


	16. dead last

He's sat outside the principal's office and at least he's not crying, so that's something. Dad is inside, talking to the principal, two counselors, and the one or two teachers who still believed Gordon wasn't quite a lost cause, academically.

It's a private school. A _boarding_ school. It's expensive-everything in their lives is expensive-prestigious. His classmates are the children of some of the richest people in the world, and every last damn one of them is smarter than he is. Gordon is thirteen, and before mom had died it had been a tech school that they'd picked out together. He'd never been at the _top_ of the class, but he'd been solidly around the middle. Then Mom had died and the whole family had gotten all shuffled around, and somewhere along the line someone had said it made sense for the boys to start to try and get a little independence from one another. In Gordon's case, a little more structure. A little distance, because he needs to stop clinging onto Virgil.

So boarding school.

And now he's failing. Failing out of everything, dead last. Gordon had never thought about it before, how _someone_ has to be in that last spot, the spot on the bottom, the very worst. It makes him feel wormy and black and cold inside, knowing that it's _him_.

Oh well, _now_ he's crying a little.

And the door opens and that's a million times worse, because now there's Dad, and there's a certain way the door closes behind him that makes Gordon's chest collapse, like a fist has clenched around it.

He doesn't look up when his father's hand touches his shoulder, only shakes his head and rubs viciously at his eyes, sniffles hugely. A big ragged gasp slips out and then he barely stifles a sob.

The hand leaves his shoulder and returns a moment later, with a blue silk pocket square in Jeff's neatly trimmed fingers. "C'mon, kiddo," Jeff says quietly, and then he's crouched down to kneel in front of his son. "Hey, Gordy. Gordon, it's okay."

"D-did-'m I kicked out?"

"No, I'm withdrawing you. This isn't the right fit. That's all right."

Gordon still can't look at his father, so he crams the little square of silk against his face and mumbles into it. "I didn't _mean_ to fail everything."

"Well, they tell me you were doing pretty well with biology for a while."

"That's the _dumb_ science." He hadn't known that when he'd signed up. Virgil had told him to take Chemistry, because Virgil was a little bit in love with Chemistry. John had offered to tutor him if he switched to Physics, because John's always been a little bit unable to believe that not everyone just _gets_ physics. Gordon had just been fascinated by life and the whole idea of where it came from. He hadn't known that Biology was considered the lowest on the tier. Finding that out had sort of precipitated the slide out of barely passing.

"You're not stupid, Gordon," his father tells him, firmly and assuredly, contradicting the thing that Gordon's grown sure about over the past two terms. "We know that. You've been in other schools and done fine, we know you're perfectly capable. This is just the wrong environment for you. So we're going to find something else."

"I'm sorry."

Jeff puts his hand on Gordon's shoulder again, coaxes him up out of the chair. His arm stays securely around his son's shoulders, that sort of halfway almost-hug, their sides pressed tight together. "It wasn't your mistake. C'mon, kiddo. We're going to go get burgers and shakes and then we're going to foget about this place. Do the year over. Their athletics programs leave a lot to be desired, anyway, and you've always been at your best when there's a better outlet for competition. I should've thought of that before."

The blue square of silk gets Gordon's nose blown into it and he finally manages to meet his father's eyes. "It's really not my fault?"

Jeff's smiling and he ruffles Gordon's hair, gives him a nudge as they start towards the front door from the school's main hall. "Not at all. We'll start looking at places out on the coast. John's got another year and half to go at Stanford, he's got an apartment. I'm sure he wouldn't mind if you wanted to stay with him."

The phrase _oil and water_ crosses Gordon's mind, but it's followed shortly by _boys' dormitory_ and so he manages a grin. "Me and John'd kill each other."

Jeff's snort of laughter makes Gordon's grin widen, because his dad knows he's not wrong. "John's a bit more mellow about college than he was about highschool. He's happier now that he's in his own space."

It occurs to Gordon that he hasn't actually spent any time with John in almost three years, and maybe Dad's got a strange sort of point. "Yeah...yeah maybe."

"Excellent swim teams, too, out on the coast. Used to be we couldn't get you out of the pool back home. Your mother always thought it'd be a good idea. Follow in her...uh...butterfly strokes."

As the doors swing open and the New England spring sunshine glints off Jeff's BMW, Gordon's intrigued for the first time. "Yeah," he nods again, and when he takes the steps down, he takes them two at a time. "Yeah, we should definitely talk about _that_."


	17. fender bender

**A/N: The following has a second part, which will be posted as a second chapter 3**

"North Colorado Medical Center, this is International Rescue calling Emergency Medical Dispatch, do you copy?"

"Receiving you, International Rescue, what's your emergency?" The holocomm in Thunderbird 2's cockpit displays a pert young woman, blonde, green-eyed. _Pretty_ , Virgil thinks, _Gordon's type. He should be up here flirting with her._

"I've got an injured crewman–" _My brother. Because I screwed up, I made a bad call, and now this is going to be **awful**._ "–I've forwarded you my vehicle stats, I need to know if I'm clear to land on your helipad. We're three minutes out."

There's a flicker of the woman's gaze over some screen Virgil can't see and she nods. "You're within our weight limit–barely. Can you give me more details for triage?"

Virgil winces as he hears Alan's voice, halfway between coaxing and pleading, and drifting up from the half-lowered cargo lift. Gordon's in the hold, with Alan looking after him. Alan's okay, but if Gordon hadn't been there he wouldn't be. "–broken arm, probable concussion, possible internal bleeding–" He sighs heavily, even as he starts his approach. "You're gonna wanna send a couple extra orderlies. Maybe–I don't know, be ready to sedate him. This'll be rough."

"We don't typically–"

"Trust me," Virgil interrupts, grim. "You're gonna need a few more pairs of hands."

* * *

It's gotten quiet in the hold by the time Virgil takes the lift down. Gordon's huddled in the furthest corner from the door, and he can't seem to stifle a sob over the pneumatic hiss of the lift. Alan's hovering nearby and his blue eyes are wide and frightened. "Easy, little brother," Virgil starts, as his boots hit the floor of the hold. He jerks a thumb over his shoulder at Alan, to get him to open the hatch. Alan scurries away and the relief that Virgil's taking over is clear in his eyes.

"Gordon," Virgil leads in again, approaching and crouching down. "Gordon, it'll be okay. C'mon, squirt. look at me.""

" _No_." Mumbled, a blank refusal. Gordon's tucked his broken arm close against his chest, the elbow lumpy and distended. His face is bloody, a gash below his eye from the pod crash, the eyelid swollen half-shut and blossoming into a dark, ugly bruise. His voice is thick, slurring, and as his head jerks up, the eye he can still see out of doesn't quite focus, staring and wild. "Virgil. They'll cut me open again. Virgil, _please_ no. Please, _please_ , I don't wanna be cut up anymore. I don't. I _can't_."

"Gordy, it won't be like before. I promise."

Gordon doesn't remember the hydrofoil crash. None of it. As far as they've been able to tell, Gordon's memory of what happened doesn't pick up until a week after he'd come out of a medically induced coma. From that point on it's a haze of nightmarish hallucinations from a myriad of painkillers, in and out of surgery, his world shrunk down into agony and terror and a fractured perception of reality. It's still up for debate as to when exactly Gordon had managed to go back to being Gordon. There are times like now–in the throes of post-traumatic flashbacks, when he's nearly numb with panic–when he loses himself again.

"Shh. Shh, Gordy, no one's gonna cut you open. It's okay." Virgil modulates his tone down a few decibels, soft and reassuring, even as he creeps closer to his brother. TB2's hydraulics whine as Alan starts to open the hatch and Gordon crumples, breaking down against the back wall with a choking moan of pain and fear. Virgil closes the distance between them and presses a hand into Gordon's thick blond hair. "Was just a little accident, Gordon, just a fenderbender. You rolled a pod, you hit your head, maybe busted your arm. That's all. This isn't like the crash."

It's _damn_ hard to get Gordon into a hospital.

"Back here."

Alan's ushering a crew of four EMT's into the cargo bay and Gordon's good hand seizes a handful of Virgil's sleeve, clinging and frantic, even as the middle child carefully gets an arm around his lower back, starts to drag him out of the corner. He holds a hand up to stay the first two paramedics from stepping in. They'll only spook him.

Gordon's plenty spooked already and his breathing is harsh, uncontrolled between broken sobbing. " _Don't_. Virgil, _don't_. Stop. Stop, _please_. I wanna go home. Let's just go Virge, w-we can just go _home_."

Alan, unnecessarily, but because he's been fairly shaken up by this whole ordeal, pipes up with his voice breaking, "Don't hurt him, Virge."

"No one's going to hurt him," Virgil answers firmly, though he's glanced over his shoulder and gestured to one of the paramedics to come forward. He can see the syringe in the man's hand, and it's probably the easiest solution. "Gordy, they're here to help. Right?"

Gordon's gone. Whatever's left in his place is pulling away, gasping himself into hyperventilation, struggling in Virgil's grasp, though this is utterly futile. His heels hit the diamond plate floor of the cargo hold, scrabble for purchase and fail to gain it. He lets out a faint, desperate sound and sags, giving up, even as Virgil gets ahold of his arms, minding his broken forearm, to hold him still.

Virgil exhales heavily, his brother's exhaustion seeping into him. He addresses the paramedics again, "Okay, come on and put him out. He only looks like he's done, don't trust him. Watch his legs, he kicks like a gold-medal Olympian, 'cuz he was."

Despite Virgil's warning, there's no further resistance from Gordon, and a syringe-load of phenobarbital later, Virgil's the one gently lifting his brother onto a gurney. With a last, lingering touch of his brother's forehead, he finally permits the paramedics to take over. as Gordon's whisked away into the hospital, Alan joins Virgil, hanging back in the cargo hold.

"Is he gonna be okay, Virgil?" Alan asks, his voice still smaller than it should be. "i've never seen him…I-I mean, I knew about the hospital thing, I knew he gets kinda weird, but I didn't know…I didn't think–"

Virgil puts an arm around Alan's shoulders. "Gordon's tough," he assures Alan. "Let's go hit the cafeteria. He's in good hands."

* * *

Scott's been on the line with the hospital, he's made it clear that Gordon's coming home as soon as possible. So, with his broken arm freshly cast and a bandage beneath his eye, Gordon's delivered out of the hospital again.

When they collect him, after four hours of waiting around the hospital, Gordon's high as a kite. He _giggles_ when Virgil draws a cartoony squid on his brand new cast, but grows abruptly sombre at the sight of Alan, tired and distraught and teary-eyed, and uncertain if Gordon's still too fragile for the hug he desperately wants to give him.

"Hey. Hey, Allie. S'all right, Al." Gordon holds out his good arm and pulls his only little brother into a tight embrace. "It's okay. I've had worse."

"Mmm." There's a stifled sniff and Alan squirms an arm free and holds it out to beckon to Virgil. "Bring it in, Virge," he demands, and Virgil, naturally, obliges.

It's a long, quiet and sleepy flight home, for everyone but Virgil, who's going to need a long time before he can shake the memory of Gordon, cowering in the hold.


	18. one armed bandits

**a/n: sequel to the previous chapter "fender bender", and apologies for the delay, we had a hurricane and hurricane related issues over the weekend**

* * *

Gordon was the only one who'd made it as far as his actual bedroom, when the three of them got back, and that was only because Scott had been waiting to usher him up to bed. Virgil had shrugged out of his toolbelt, kicked off his boots, and gone to collapse in a hammock he kept in the corner of the hangar. Alan had gotten as far as the living room, then curled up on the deep, plush blue carpet underneath the coffee table. Scott had dropped a blanket over him and routed all calls to his private line, so the youngest could get some rest.

Eight hours of sleep later, both Alan and Virgil were up, about, and then back to work. Scott and Kayo were similarily engaged, some rumour of the Hood getting up to his usual antics in Zurich, something about a bank vault and a scheme to crack it by filling the thing with high density expanding foam. So, a full fourteen hours later, when Gordon dragged himself out of bed and downstairs, the house was empty, except for him, Brains, and Grandma. That was fine. He could use at least a few hours without his brothers asking about just what had happened on TB2.

He didn't really remember, didn't really want to, and with the aid of a pair of pills and a glass of water, it was less of problem than it might have been. He lingered a little long in the bathroom, poking at the truly epic black eye he'd managed. He hadn't had a black eye since highschool. They're less cool looking than he remembers.

So, a little fuzzy on painkillers and generally mellowed out, Gordon wandered into the kitchen to find Grandma Tracy, attempting to cut a grapefruit in half and failing. It took him a moment to realize that this was pretty feeble from a culinary standpoint, even by Grandma's standards. Then it clicked that she was wearing a bandage of her own, on the arm opposite his.

"Grandma! We match!" He held up his own arm, rigid in a fibreglass cast (with a custom, water-proof lining, worth every extra penny) and with a squid drawn on it by Virgil. He was going to need to get that tattoo someday. Maybe after the cast came off he'd make Virgil give him a lift to the mainland, take the plunge. It was a pretty nice looking squid.

"Morning, kiddo," Grandma greeted him, abandoning her grapefruit and gesturing with her free hand at her bandaged wrist. "Not really. Mine's only a sprain and I haven't got the shiner to go with it."

Gordon dropped onto one of the stools at the breakfast bar and slumped dramatically. "One day I'll be pretty again," he lamented, appropriately tragic.

Grandma ruffled his hair a little awkwardly with her good hand. "This is assuming you were pretty to begin with, squirt."

" _Grandma_. Ouch. And I was gonna ask if you wanted any of the very nice drugs the hospital gave me. _Never mind_. What happened to _you_ , anyway?"

She made a face and sighed. "Tripped over MAX. MAX isn't allowed in house anymore."

"Darn that MAX. You want me to help you make breakfast, Grandma? Grapefruits are terrible. No one should eat grapefruits."

"I happen to like grapefruits." Grandma Tracy looks at the half mangled piece of fruit, and the meat cleaver she'd been attempting to split it with. "…here, hold that for me. I wanna take another shot."

Grandma's got a tricky sense of humor sometimes, and Gordon shifts to sit on his good hand, protective. "Nuh uh, Grandma. How 'bout we make pancakes instead?"

"The last time I made pancakes you and your brothers poured salt all over the table and played shuffleboard with them."

"You're just mad because Alan beat you at the _definition_ of an old lady game." Gordon grins at the memory and gets up, circling around into the kitchen to remove the cleaver from Grandma's possession, and fetch a bowl and…well, he wasn't exactly not sure. Probably flour. Eggs maybe. Peanut butter sounded like a good idea. Probably chocolate chips. "C'mon Grandma! Dream team! One armed bandits! Me and you! _Pancakes_!"

"A one-armed bandit is a slot machine. I oughta drag you out to Vegas and show you a _real_ old lady game." But she grins right back, the genetic source of Gordon's cocky smile. "Get a pan."

Grandma and Gordon have more in common than gets talked about, generally. The Tracys forget about Grandma's sense of humor, about her confidence and easy charm. Gordon, especially, forgets that Grandma's got a way of ruffling his hair, patting his shoulder, giving him little, affectionate hugs that have a different feel to than his brothers' gestures. He's not much taller than Grandma, but her and Alan are the only family members he has any height on, and if the lengths of Alan's skinny arms and legs are any indication, this isn't going to last. Even Brains, though scrawnier, has nearly half a foot of height on him.

So Grandma doesn't make him feel small, doesn't treat him like he's broken. And Grandma can make him laugh, and Grandma's the sort of person who'll flick him on the ear and dust him with flour when he crams a handful of chocolate chips in his mouth. And when it turns into a foodfight, and the two of them are helpless with laughter in the middle of the kitchen in the aftermath, with peanut butter everywhere and black briquettes that were supposed to be pancakes, Grandma's the sort of person who'll plant a Grandma style kiss on his forehead and tell him he's going to need a bath.

MAX is permitted back in the house to clean up the kitchen. Gordon and Grandma start planning a trip to Vegas. Gordon's still got plenty of time off, and there's no sense being bored. And after all, slot machines only take one hand. And Las Vegas buffets are legendary. Probably there'll be pancakes there.


	19. smother

To call Grandma's voice gravelly is a profound understatement. It would be more accurate to suggest that at some point the woman had swallowed a quarry, like the old lady who'd swallowed a fly, but with a far more sensible and happier ending.

Only Grandma's voice is currently absent, an acute case of laryngitis, caught on a trip into damp, rainy London. Virgil, having been the one to give her a ride to the mainland and having permitted her to get off TB2 without a scarf and a hat, has labeled himself personally responsible.

To Grandma's detriment.

Because Virgil learned from John, and John learned from Scott, and Scott learned from the best, when it comes to smothering sick family members, heaping them under blankets and dousing them with tea. The mustard plaster had been refused at point blank, because Grandma's got to draw the line somewhere. All she actually _wants_ , at the moment, is a nice bowl of soup, prepared by someone who isn't a robot. This is just an excuse to get out of bed, but Virgil's an expert in deflecting transparent excuses.

"Gordon and Alan have it under control," Virgil assures her, ignoring the glare he's receiving . He fills the doorway with broad shoulders and folded arms. "You've gotta rest up, Gran. Don't want this turning towards pneumonia, at your age."

The answer to the mild emphasis laid upon the words _at your age_ is a short, sharp gesture that gets a grin out of Virgil. "Really, Grandma? _Language_."


	20. phylum: arthropoda, class: arachnida

_response to a prompt: "Virgil.. and... Sipders!. alot of them"(sic)_

* * *

It's funny, you see the cobwebs, but you don't think about the spiders who made them. The Villa on the whole always seems too clean for spiders, for cobwebby forgotten places, but Virgil's managed to find one anyway. They all find excuses to hang around Dad's desk. Scott pretends to look for pens, when it's an important test or a big exam, Alan studies sitting in Dad's chair. Gordon hides from whatever's worth hiding from, hunches himself behind the chair and avoids the rest of the world. John leafs through the drawers, reads old documents. There's a letter from their mother. They all know about it, John's the only one who's read it.

Virgil, in the rare, quiet moments when the rest of the family doesn't need him for something, just lies down beneath the sleek old desk and stares up at the underside. Sometimes, not often. He's not hiding, not like Gordon does. His boots stick out the end, everyone knows he's there.

And this time he finds him staring up at a little haze of cobwebbing in the corner. And at the cluster of tiny spiders. On impulse he reaches up and taps the underside of the desk. The little orb roils and shudders in a multiplicity of panicky arachnids, but none of them go anywhere. They cling to each other, brothers and sisters all, themselves the only thing they have in the world.

Virgil watches them for a long time before he gets up, and even after, he wonders where they'll all go, and how many other families of spiders there are on the Island, how many tiny generations have passed, since his Dad last sat at his desk.


	21. five star hotel

" _Gordon._ It's a five-star hotel. I've been gone for _ten minutes_."

Her tone is exquisitely pained. Simultaneously, she manages to convey her exasperation, her amusement and her disbelief that he's managed to completely strip the hotel room of available linens, shove the mattress off its box spring and onto the floor, and construct an airy white structure that nearly reaches the vaulted ceiling and encompasses both the TV and the mini-bar. The lights have been dimmed. The sun is setting outside, liquid gold melting over the Vienna skyline. The view is obscured by the bulk of the fort in the middle.

Admittedly, as blanket forts go, it's impressive.

And Gordon knows it, too, and pokes his head out of the entrance, curtained in Egyptian cotton sheets, grinning like a fool. "Like I haven't done this in every single five-star hotel I've ever stayed at."

She's still got a cashmere stole wrapped around her shoulders, white satin gloves up to her armpits. She's still dripping diamonds and with her hair twisted into a crown of braids and shimmering Swarovski. Her dress is not just a dress, but a _gown_ , a cascading confection of teal chiffon. Her shoes are killing her. With a sigh, she carefully steps out of them, rolls her feet in their silk stockings against the coolness of the floor.

His tux has already carpeted the path into the hastily constructed fort. If the fort is a surprise, this isn't. Penelope's finally started to get used to the fact that Gordon can't cross a private threshold without starting to strip out of whatever he's wearing and littering the path behind him with discarded clothing. A pair of wingtip shoes have been flung all the way across the room.

"Gordon. I'm _tired_ ," she protests. She certainly doesn't _whine_ , because a Lady does no such thing, but there's a plaintive, pleading note in her voice. "I wanted to get undressed and go to _bed_."

The gap in the sheets pulls open wider and there's utterly no sympathy in his grin. The mattress is wedged between the bottom of the bed and the stand upon which the television sits. There's a bend in the middle of it, the top half propped up against the bed, and he's heaped every pillow in the room into a veritable nest. He's still wearing a pristine white shirt, undone at the collar and cuffs, but above goldfish-patterned boxers. He's lost the shoes but kept the socks, and these are held up by rainbow garters. Penelope is briefly distracted by his calves. "Well, the bed's in here. C'mon, Pen."

"This is childish."

"Hell yeah."

"Oh…" Further protest dies a noble death, gives into a long, yawning sigh. The fabric of her skirt whispers as she drops into a crouch, scoots herself into the held open door of the fort. "You're an absolute peasant."

"My family's worth like a trillion dollars."

"And alarmingly you _still_ manage to be a peasant," Penelope snipes. There's some negotiation required, but she manages to shuffle past him and kneel on the bare mattress, rearranging the mound of pillows to accommodate her skirt. There's a surprising amount of headroom, and Gordon's got the TV turned on, tuned to the menu, filling the small space with soft jazz and a rainbow of shifting gradients, calming blues and purples and greens.

Gordon primly pulls the sheets closed, and makes some architectural adjustments to the interior buttressing; mostly transplanted chairs from around the room. Penelope busies herself peeling the gloves off her arms and removing her jewelry; earrings, a tiara, a heavy collar of platinum and diamonds. The mini-bar is just within reach and she deposits her jewelery in a heavy rocks glass, even as Gordon finishes his inspection and drops onto the mattress next to her, sighs in that impossibly contented way he has. "Cozy," he proclaims, proud and cheerful.

"Mmm. Unzip me."

"That is _literally_ the only thing I've been looking forward to this entire trip." And he does it with the appropriate relish, with a slow, deliberate draw of the zipper down the length of her bodice, stopping respectfully at the small of her back, though she's wearing a cream coloured slip beneath the gown. "Good?" he asks over her shoulder.

Maybe she surprises him, leaning back against his chest, taking a deep, relaxing breath against the loosened bodice of her dress, rolling her shoulders against him. He certainly doesn't act surprised and his arms loop around her waist for a brief, affectionate squeeze. "Much better," she murmurs, as his cheek brushes hers. "But don't kiss me, I'm caked in makeup."

Gordon pecks her lightly on the cheek anyway, clears his throat. "Yech. Augh nope. Nope! Eww. Aw, Pen, wish you'd worn the cream foundation, I can power through that. This is that mineral powder business, it's like licking a battery. Yeah, your overnight bag's in the corner there. I made sure. I wanna kiss you."

She can't help a laugh at that, but she just settles a little more insistently against his chest, makes no move to reach for her bag, peeking out beneath a pillow at the foot of the bed. "This is a very thoughtfully provisioned fort."

"I'm a thoughtful kinda guy." He shifts slightly, pulls her closer. "Oh, hey, on _that_ note—" He reaches past her, fishes in the heap of pillows and blankets that hem them in, comes up with a miniature bottle of champagne. "Ta da! Is Chez Gordon starting to work its wiles on you?"

"Something like that." Penelope yawns again, pushes herself up and shifts herself to the corner of the mattress to retrieve her overnight bag. She's discarded her shawl and now she wriggles the rest of the way out of her dress, while Gordon goes to work on the champagne bottle. He wrangles with foil and wire while she goes to work with wipes and cleansers, wipes away an hour's worth of work with no small amount of relief. Stripped bare of an elegant evening's accoutrements, Penelope shivers a little in her slinky satin slip, silky, gartered stockings, and retrieves her cashmere wrap.

There's a twist of skin against cork, a grunt, and then a pop of carbonation that nearly has her jump out of her skin. Before the wine can bubble up out of the bottle, Gordon's gone to take a deep, long swig. He grins at her before handing the bottle over. She's a little less elegant about it than he is and drops of wine splash on her bare skin. She shivers.

"Cold, Pen?" Gordon asks, solicitous as always, as she hands the bottle back. He eyeballs the level of liquid inside, then drains the remainder in one go. There's a burp that charitably goes ignored, and he sets it aside, as Penny snuggles back into the divot in the mattress, tucks herself underneath her unfolded shawl.

"Mmm. No, just tired. It's too cozy for me to be cold."

"D'you know, _actually_ , it can get cozier? C'mere."

There's a bit more tactical adjustment, somehow a king-sized mattress has been pretzeled into the sort of shape that results in just barely room for the two of them, with Penelope cuddled up small and soft against Gordon's chest; one of his arms snug around her shoulders, his other hand resting warm and secure on her hip. Several kisses are judiciously distributed, and then they settle against each other, tired, but happy.

He kisses the top of her head and then takes a long, deep breath of the smell of her hair, lets out a deep, satisfied sigh. "God. Mmm. Yeah. Hey, I know I said so like, a thousand times tonight, but you're really just the loveliest goddamn woman I've ever met and I think you're _amazing_ and I could drop dead right this second and I'd die happy."

He's probably only said it about a hundred times, but she cuddles closer against his chest anyway, her fingers toying sleepily with one of the buttons of his shirt. "Mmhm. Well, thank you, darling. For your part, you build a tremendously impressive fort."

She can hear the grin in his voice. "Heh. Well, yeah. You're not the kinda girl who's impressed by five-star-hotels. A guy's gotta improvise."

Penelope fails to stifle a yawn and it's catching, because Gordon yawns next, hugs her a little tighter and murmurs something into her hair. She wants to say something about how she likes lighting best, likes the way the light is soft and golden white, how it's lovely and warm. She wants to tell him that he smells good, like sandalwood and citrus, and that she likes the way his heart sounds in her ear, steady and consistent. She likes the way his hands are strong and gentle, likes the way his socks are held up by straps of rainbow elastic. None of this makes it past the fuzzy edge between waking and sleeping, and she can already hear the way his breathing's softened and evened out, deep and slow.

So instead of saying everything she thinks, drowsy and dozing off as she is, Penelope just reaches up, softly pats his cheek and goes for the sort of heartfelt, straightforward sentiment that Gordon tends to appreciate more than anything else. "Good fort," she murmurs, and then falls asleep with a contented sigh.


	22. terms of endearment

It hasn't been this frosty in Thunderbird 2's cockpit since the time Virgil crashed his 'bird in Antarctica.

But he's nowhere near the bottom of the world this time, and they're definitely still airborne, it seems like the cause is _probably_ his passenger.

 _This_ seems improbable because Lady Penelope is usually so charming. In fact, he's pretty sure she was charming as recently as about ten minutes ago. The chilly silence from her side of the cockpit is relatively new.

Virgil's carefully picking his way back through the course of the trip so far, trying to figure if it's something he might've said or done since picking her up. He's pretty sure he hasn't done anything. Pretty sure that he's doing her—and Gordon, by proxy—a favour, by giving her a lift out to the Cayman Islands, where Gordon's volunteered his time with a local environmental research agency. He'll be wrapping up by the time Virgil arrives to pick him up, and Penelope's along as a surprise.

In fact, they've been listening to the comm chatter between Gordon and John for the past ten minutes, still in the midst of a salvage operation off of a particularly vulnerable coral reef. This has mostly been Gordon, talking to himself. Virgil's just about to ask if there's something the matter, when Penelope reaches over and flicks the radio off. And then, her tone positively _glacial_ , "It's so _very_ flattering to know that every pet name he's given _me_ is coming secondhand from his damn _submarine._ "

The list of responses that populate Virgil's brain includes tactful rejoinders such as, " _Technically it's a submersible_ " and " _You mean he calls you sweetheart-sunshine-babydoll too?_ " But Penelope has an expression that would draw unflattering colloquial comparisons from his Grandma, so he plays it safe and, more saliently, dumb. "Wait a minute. Are you jealous? Of _TB4_?"

There's a frosty huff of breath that lowers the temperature a whole degree, and Penelope's answer is haughty, "Jealousy is a small, petty, _ugly_ emotion and not one that happens to _me_."

"First time for everything," Virgil remarks, though he's careful to keep his tone light and uncritical and his eyes on the empty skies ahead. A shudder of minor turbulence rumbles through the body of Thunderbird Two, spares him from saying anything further as his hands steady on the controls.

"I am _certainly_ not jealous of his stupid ship."

Technically, submersibles are referred to as "boats" and not "ships. This gets added to the list of things that Virgil knows better than to say. "No, of course not," he answers instead and nods in sage agreement. He pauses a moment, and then offers, "If you _were_ though—not, of course, that you are—it's not like it wouldn't be kinda understandable."

"It's just… _baby_. And _darlin'_. And 'just through here, come on sweetheart, you know I _love_ you'." There's a soft sigh, maybe a note of rueful concession. "I suppose it's a pilot thing," Penelope hazards, and she's folded her arms and might have settled in her seat to the degree that an uneducated eye would mistake her for slouching dejectedly—not that a lady slouches, so obviously an uneducated observer would be wrong about that.

"A little bit a pilot thing. Mostly a Gordon thing." Virgil reaches overhead, fiddles with a few toggles and switches, and notes, "Oh, uh, and a Kayo thing. Uh, really kind of worse, with Kayo. Didn't know about Kayo and the kinda filth she talks to Thunderbird Shadow. John's still got her cockpit radio on a two-second delay and an automated censor."

"Well, I'm glad to know it could be _worse_."

Virgil shrugs, grins. "He's never not gonna love that sub, Lady P. But I mean, c'mon. Gordon's got a big heart. There's room for both of you."

"Is there? There's precious little breathing room already, between his job and _my_ job—I do sometimes hate it, you know. That he loves what _he_ does just as much as I love what _I_ do. More, some days, I think." Virgil's on the receiving end of another big, rather dramatic sigh, and maybe her irritation is masking something softer, a bit more vulnerable. "I don't know. Sometimes I feel as though there's something rather difficult about being just another 'something Gordon loves'."

" _Mmm_." There's probably some sort of social protocol for giving a lady unsolicited advice. There's probably a subtle, sophisticated way to lead into telling someone like Penelope _exactly_ what her problem is and what she should do about it. Virgil's not familiar with it, if there is, so he goes barreling right ahead, regardless, with advice that's blunt, down to earth, and practical, "All right. Well, if you want _my_ opinion…"

* * *

There are post-dive checks to go through, once TB4's been docked with TB2 again. Systems need to be rechecked and rechecked—and technically, this is Gordon's favourite part of any dive.

He knows his 'bird. _Loves_ his bird. But piloting it is one thing, and looking after it is quite another. He appreciates TB4 plenty from the inside, of course. They all know their ships backwards and forwards and inside out, but it's always been Gordon's opinion that since there's less of TB4 to know, he knows his Thunderbird _best_. And it's a hell of a machine, especially when you're the one who gets to pilot it.

But from the _outside_. Standing in TB2's hold, it's hard not to just stand there for a minute and _ogle_ Thunderbird 4. The curve of the forward compartment, that precious little snub nose. The turbines at the back, and the way they flex out, extending, as he runs the hydraulics through their paces. Gives him the shivers in the best kinda way. He toggles them upward, downward, port and starboard, makes a note that, from the outside, the orientation on the port-side engine looks like it's a little sluggish. He strolls around the back to take a closer look, can't help an affectionate pat on TB4's hull.

"So good today, gorgeous. _So good_. Pretty, pretty, _pretty_ baby. Just gotta get a look at the actuator here—"

He almost doesn't notice the hydraulic hum of the lift down from the cockpit, only they're ten minutes into the flight back home and he hadn't heard the alert that goes along with Virgil, setting the auto-pilot. So. Concerning. He peeks out from behind TB4, wondering if maybe Alan tagged along for the ride.

The lift isn't fast. Gordon's given Virgil hell about it before, but the sight of a pair of strappy, summery pink heels changes his mind. In fact, the lift is perfectly, _beautifully_ slow, has the effect of a camera panning slowly up a pair of legs in a borrowed coverall, cuffed up at the bottom—deep, navy blue, one of his and not one of Virgil's.

Somehow Penelope manages to make this look _fantastic_ , even though the thing is too big, slouchy and shapeless and wholly utilitarian.

Actually. Maybe that's exactly why.

"Penny! Hey, Penny, hi!" Gordon's across the cargo hold in seconds, to hold out a hand and help her step daintily off the lift. He gets an affectionate peck on the cheek for his trouble, and her fingers squeeze his, brief and warm as she steps down onto the treaded metal floor. "Babe, watch your step down here, 'kay? But hi, though!"

She has that slight, perfect little smile, the one that shows in her eyes more than anywhere else, like when she's being oh-so-completely restrained and that she's not just as pleased as he is. "Hello, darling. Surprise!"

"Virg picked you up? Aw man, I gotta do the rest of my post-dive, I'm gonna be like another twenty minutes, but—" Gordon's already trying to figure out if there's anywhere in the hold where Penny can sit without getting covered in grease, and coming up empty. "Umm…If you want, I can—"

"Actually," she says, and steps past him. Takes a slow, sidling stroll down the length of Thunderbird 4. Her fingertips reach out and trail along the curve of the hull. This is a fresh and intriguing combination of factors that have Gordon trying to remember if Penelope's ever been in this kinda proximity to his 'bird before. Given the entirely new and novel way his heart's started hammering in his ears, he's pretty sure this is a first. And _then_ , with those stormblue eyes glancing back over her shoulder, Penelope goes on, "—actually, I was thinking. She's such a lovely craft, really, it occurred to me I'd never seen her up close. I was wondering if you might take me through the particulars?"

"Youwannatalkaboutmy _sub_." It all comes out in one word, shot to the tip of his tongue by another lovestruck thud of his heart. "Well. Well, _yeah,_ Pen! Oh man! Okay okay okay. S'cuse me, lemme just…okay, I gotta open her up, just lemme squeeze by _…._ _Penny_. You're the _best_. Okay!" Never mind _her_ watching her step, Gordon's almost tripping over his scuba booties he's so excited.

She catches his hand as he passes and there's absolutely no help for it, Gordon's got no choice but to sweep her into a hug, planting a kiss on her perfect pretty lips and grinning at the way she gasps and laughs as he lets her go. "Gordon, good heavens," she chides, arch and teasing and artificially scandalized. "Not in front of the submersible."


	23. snow on the island

Tis the night before Christmas, in the warm South Pacific  
Still a satellite searches, its aims non-specific;  
It roves over frequencies, wideband and narrow,  
Searches for people and places in peril;

John's brothers are nestled all snug in their beds;  
And it's not like he wants them to be elsewhere instead;  
But the world's a big place, and big places require,  
Someone to watch them in case something's on fire.

Scott's not asleep, the lone instigator,  
If John is the watcher then Scott is the waiter  
When the call hits the comms and the lounge comes alight,  
Scott's already ready for a long winter's night.

The moon o'er the island shines silver on whitecaps,  
But down come three boys in their PJ's and nightcaps,  
A situation's arisen, that's all that they know,  
Though still sleepy and stumbling, Thunderbirds still have to go.

Thunderbird 1 with its thrusters a'thundering,  
Takes to the skies over hearts wide and wondering.  
Scott arcs over the ocean, til the mainland's in sight,  
Though it's not his chariot children look for tonight.

Load Pod A, load Pod B, load extra hydraulics,  
Load your little brothers, cuz we're all workaholics  
All clear on the runway! All clear in the hangar!  
Obligatory off-rhyme with Thomas Brodie-Sangster!

Thunderbird 2 puts a hurricane to shame,  
Slow may be steady, but this isn't a game;  
Off of the launchpad—Mach Four–Five–Six–Seven  
Thunder to shame all the choirs of Heaven.

Scott's at the forefront, angling north,  
Still the distress call drawing them forth,  
Virgil and Gordon and Alan behind,  
John, ever-watchful, the eye in the sky.

So Scott overtakes him and doesn't believe it,  
It's a good thing his brothers will catch up and see this.  
The craft in distress is a sleek little sleigh,  
It's listing just slightly, reindeers disarrayed.

"Thunderbird 5, this is Thunderbird 1,  
Disable all vid feeds, don't record this run."  
John's got a clear view, his brother's by proxy,  
There's no way in hell Santa's getting a doxxing.

"Thunderbird 2, drop your altitude slightly,  
It's a midair-landing, keep her still and fly tightly.  
Alan and Gordon, get up on the roof.  
From what I can see it's the lead reindeer's hoof."

The Terrible Twosome are consummate professionals,  
This sort of deed, well it's hardly forgettable;  
Gordon's all giddy and Alan's all solemn,  
And they get it all sorted, tell the Big Guy they've got him.

He speaks not a word, just a nod and a wave,  
There's an exchange of glances and the boys all behave,  
A leather gloved finger on the side of a nose,  
Then the crack of a whip and the old elf just goes.

And then back to reality, everything sorted,  
Back home to the hangars, a crisis averted.  
Not a word to be spoken, not a thing left to say,  
But they know in their hearts that they saved Christmas Day.

Still it's anticlimatic, that quiet flight home,  
Might have at least had a "thanks!" from the lumpy old gnome,  
But on the return approach, from on high like a diamond—  
For the first time in—well, ever—there's snow on the Island.


	24. nearer to thee

Sesquicentennial was a funny enough word that she was surprised he could say it with a straight face.

Lady Penelope had learned to expect that calls with Gordon would be thirty-percent flirting, thirty-percent terrible jokes, and a twenty-twenty split between actual business and what Gordon considered actual business, which was generally whatever was going on around Tracy Island. Lady Penelope was remarkably well informed about Grandma Tracy's cooking.

So the call that came on April 12th, 2061 was entirely more serious than she expected. World Heritage was going to be placing a monument, far in the North Atlantic, to commemorate the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Titanic diaster. Gordon had _begged_ to be the person who placed it. This call, unlike most others, was a hundred percent impassioned pleading.

It threw her off. And made her feel bad, because though she was a member of the World Heritage Society, her political influence only went so far. Once she was quite certain he was serious, she found herself hoping not to let him down.

"I do hope I can make your case, Gordon, but quite honestly I have to ask you not to get your hopes up."

This failed to diminish his earnestness in the slightest. "I know. No, I mean, I know that. I'm not. But–well, I'm calling a year early. If that's not enough time to get my name in–"

"As I said, Gordon, I'll do my best." Lady Penelope paused, and felt it would be dishonest not to caution him about the reality of the wreck's location. "To be honest, I can't understand your interest. There's really nothing _there_ any longer–preservation efforts dwindled during the years leading up to the Global Conflict, and what's left is mostly rust. World Heritage has long declared the site closed to all submarine traffic. It's a cemetery now, and nothing more. May I ask why it's so important?"

Gordon had been quiet for a moment, and then flashed a sort of half-smile at her. "Heh. Yeah, probably that comes out of left field. I'm not the family history buff. Tell you what, though. In a year, whatever way it's gone, I'll tell you then. I'm gonna be there, one way or the other, even if it's only topside. How about that?"

Well, she couldn't ask for fairer than that. And patience was a virtue.

* * *

It's that year later, and she's joined him on the deck of a specially commissioned ocean liner out in the middle of the North Atlantic. A GDF crew mans the ship, a GDF pilot had taken a submersible to place the monument from the World Heritage Society. This is over and done, with a quiet ceremony. The weather's chill, and the wind on deck is frigid. There's a reception inside, a small, tasteful affair. Historians, descendants of passengers, representatives from various governments, a few attaches from the World Council. The deck is almost deserted. A few other people are scattered about, talking quietly and watching the sunlight glint off distant icebergs. Gordon's leaning on the railing staring out over the water when Lady Penelope approaches, bundled in a peacoat and scarf, and clears her throat.

"I hope you're not disappointed," she says softly, when he turns and smiles.

He shrugs and rubs a gloved hand at the back of his neck. He's got a knitted cap on, gloves, scarf, and a rather conservative black parka, in deference to the solemnity of the occasion. It occurs to Penelope that probably he's freezing. None of the Tracys have ever been particularly tolerant of the cold, but Gordon least of all. "Nah. No, I mean. Was a long shot, I guess. Still, I'm glad I got to be here. I'm not disappointed."

If he's lying, she can't tell. Lady Penelope joins him at the railing and puts a hand on his arm, apologetic. "You never did tell me why you wanted to visit the site so badly."

Gordon's so rarely serious, and she isn't quite sure how to read him as the slight smile fades, and he looks away, out over the water again. He toys with a loose thread on the finger of one of his gloves for a long time, and after this uncharacteristically long pause, he answers. "I did a history report on it, back in school. Seventh grade, first year in junior high, you know, when school starts to seem _serious_. Ahh–you got that fancy English school thing, though, maybe school was always serious for you. Anyway. New school, first class, pick a topic and do a history report; it _seemed_ serious. I'm not great about serious, and the teacher made it sound so _important_. I got really hung up, didn't know what to do, so I went to my mom."

Lady Penelope knows very little about Lucille Tracy–at least, very little about the way her boys feel about her. Lady Penelope knows what happened. Knows it was tragic, knows it changed every one of them–but she never met the woman. And Gordon, certainly, has never mentioned his mother. Not in the middle of all the jokes and the flirting that are the standard, when talking to Gordon. Penelope leans in a little closer, and hopes he takes the hint to continue.

"She got so excited. It was just some dumb project, but she was off like a rocket, all kinds of suggestions." Gordon's tone is fond, wistful. "You had to know my mom, and the way she could get excited about stuff. The Titanic thing was her idea, and she knew everything about it already. But she made me do my own research and I got hooked." Gordon glances up, finds Penelope listening intently and she almost imagines he's a little bit shy, that the slight flush in his cheeks is more than just the chill of the wind.

"She knew I would, too. Got an A on the report–and I wasn't a kid who _got_ As–she was just so proud. And from then on we just had something together. Mom had music with Virgil and space with John, and then all of a sudden there was this whole other thing, and it was just her and me. We used to talk about it for _hours_. Books and movies, documentaries, museums…"

Penelope nods, smiles slightly. "It's a captivating story. It's easy to get lost in it."

"It's _unreal_." Gordon, clearly, can get just as excited as the woman Penelope had never met. "It seems like it should just be a story. Right? But it really happened, and that just pulls you in. And not just the ship, not just the night it went down–although that's something else _entirely_ –"

" _A Night to Remember_ ," Lady Penelope quotes softly and the way Gordon turns to look at her, the way his eyes find hers–it might be the first time they've had something in common. She wouldn't have guessed they'd find it in the middle of the North Atlantic. She continues, reflective, " All that hubris, all that tragedy. All those terribly human moments, all that bravery–"

"The wireless operators–"

"Ida and Isidor Straus–"

"Molly _Brown_. What a hell of a lady." The sheer reverence in Gordon's voice makes Lady Penelope feel a warm little glow of affection. "The ship's band."

This strikes a chord with Lady Penelope. "Oh, but can you even imagine? And _here_. A hundred and fifty years ago, _here_ ," Penelope says softly and absently hums the opening few notes. Then, still half to herself, in her lilting soprano and just loud enough that he's the only one who'd hear, " _Nearer, my God, to thee–_ "

Gordon freezes. "Don't. No, _please_ don't." His hand clasps her arm a little sharply, and she stops, startled. He lets go almost immediately and she catches just a glimpse of his eyes, brightening, as he leans over the railing, looking down. Gordon's voice has gotten clipped, covering some obvious emotion."Sorry. I didn't mean–sorry, that was out of line. It's just how it's what Virgil and John played. At her funeral. I mean, I asked them to, but–I can't–I haven't heard it since."

Lady Penelope is the absolute epitome of grace, and certainly she wouldn't want to do anything against Gordon's wishes. "I'm sorry, Gordon. I didn't know, I didn't mean to upset you." Carefully she tries to change the subject, "–I didn't know John was musical. Piano, or…?"

"Violin, but he hasn't since. Was the last thing John played, and that's sad in its own way. Sorry. I didn't mean to…jeez, I didn't mean to get so serious. Don't mind me."

Clearly he doesn't want to have this moment, here and now, and yet–Penelope pauses and then, gently, with all the empathy from the long absence of her own mother, "You must miss her terribly."

There's a quick, tight nod and then the way he's drawn his shoulders down, hunched himself over the rail to stare down at the water. Somehow the already raw sense of emotion tips over a point, and her heart aches a little at the way his grief seems so fresh. It's a long time, quite possibly the longest she's ever heard him leave a lull in a conversation before he speaks up again, "She's been gone for longer than I knew her. This year. That's harder than I thought it would be, all this time and every single day there's still something I wish I'd asked her, said to her. And…I don't know. It's hard to go to the place where she is. I guess I thought I should go someplace we always wanted to go together."

"I'm sorry she's not here with you."

"Yeah. Me too." There's another silence, but shorter this time and when he looks up, he's smiling again, even if his eyes are still bright, and he sniffs slightly, coughs to try and pass it off as the cold. This is utterly transparent, though he seems to have . "Glad you're here, though. Thanks for…well, I don't know. For saying all the things she would've said. I didn't think this was–I mean, I thought it was just your history thing. World Heritage. I didn't know you'd really care so much."

Penelope smiles. "Likewise. It's a very unexpected side to you, Gordon, but I'm glad we both have it to share. And I'm honoured to have something in common with your mother."

Gordon nods, rubs at his nose. "Yeah. Yeah, she'd have liked you." He looks back down at the water, wistful again. "It's funny, how it's just like every other bit of ocean in the world–I mean, accounting for latitude and weather–the ocean's the ocean. But…a place like this, if you know what happened–"

"You'd never know it was here. And yet."

"And yet," he agrees.

Rather theatrically, hoping to lighten the mood, Lady Penelope shivers. "It's dreadfully cold out here, Gordon. Would you come back belowdecks with me? I'm sorry you weren't able to do the dive to the site this time, but–well, there'll be a commission to ensure the area remains well-protected, and I'd very much like to introduce you to the crew whose been responsible for the security of the area. If you'd like, I can even recommend you for membership to the board of directors for the preservation of the site. World Heritage requested a GDF submersible for this occasion largely for political reasons, but going forward, if you'd volunteer–"

"Really?" Gordon's voice is genuinely bright, hopeful. "Really, because that'd be _amazing_. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Do you know much about that first dive, the expedition that _found it_? Because I know it backwards and forwards and I'll talk your ear off if you let me. It's this whole other story on top of the first."

There's nothing that Lady Penelope enjoys more than hearing people speak passionately about subjects in which they're well-versed. She's entirely sincere when she answers, "It would be my genuine pleasure."

He hesitates just a moment, as she reaches for his arm. "I'll catch up with you, though. If that's okay. If you're cold, yeah, uh. Head on below, I didn't mean to keep you out here so long. It's freezing. Just…You go and I'll stay a while."

Lady Penelope nods, steps back. "Of course. Take care, Gordon."

"Thanks, Lady P."

And, in deference to what he shares with the mother he lost, Lady Penelope leaves him be. But before she leaves the deck, she takes one last look at him, a solitary figure at the edge of the deck, dark against the pale grey sky. Gordon, and the things you'd never know were there.


	25. summer storm

The rain's a blessing, in more ways than one.

The garden needs it, that's for certain. Kansas is a little bit parched this year, and though the family farm has dwindled from what used to be wheat and corn as far as the eye could see, down to a kitchen garden off the back porch, rain is still a welcome sight. Thunder rolls softly in the distance, but the farmhouse has sheltered Ruth's family for the better part of a century now, and she's never been afraid of storms.

But better still, perhaps, is the way it's confined her grandsons to the living room. It's a summer rain for a summer holiday, and all of her boys off from school, and staying with their grandparents for a few weeks. Jeff and Lucy are taking a well-deserved break, a holiday of their own. Grandpa Tracy, in the manner of farm-owning grandparents since time immemorial, is taking advantage of the handily provisioned child labour force represented by his grandsons. He's put them all hard to work.

Ruth doesn't especially mind. Grant has the four of them well in hand, and it leaves her own days to be blissfully, beautifully full of her newest and tiniest grandson. Little Alan, with his big blue eyes and wispy blond mop of hair, not even half a year old. It would be a lie to say she's not happiest to have him all to herself. He's a sweet, good-natured little boy, and she gets a little melancholy to think that he's likely to be the last baby she holds, til her grandsons go on to have babies of their own.

Of course the elder three are really the only ones old enough to be of any help, at thirteen, ten, and eight, respectively. Gordon, at four, is still game for anything and in a very helpful phase of life, and trails around after his brothers, just happy to be included. He rides around on his grandpa's broad shoulders as often as not, echoing Grant's orders to the older three, like a tiny assistant-foreman, until Scott or John drags him, whining and protesting, to collapse in the house for naptime. Under their grandfather's watchful direction, there's been hoeing and weeding and the mending and painting of fences. The tractor has been ridden around the perimeter of the property more times than might have been strictly necessary. An entire new toolshed has been constructed. It's only been a week.

So it might just be that, after the week in question, the rain is as welcomed by her boys as it is by her garden. It's possible that a week of hard labour has tuckered them all out, because it's just barely afternoon, and the five of them have already given up the ghost for the day, after a morning of board games and puzzles and a brief adventure, during which Gordon had managed to wedge himself in the dining room credenza during an ill-advised game of hide and seek.

It had been the sort of incredibly good hiding place that meant that even the three eldest by their efforts combined had been unable to find him, and had needed to nervously report to their grandmother that Gordon was missing. It's not clear whether this is Scott's fault for suggesting hide and seek in the first place, John's fault for being terrible at seeking, or Virgil's fault, because John's just at the age where he blames Virgil for everything.

Grandma Tracy, wise and well-experienced in the habits of mischievous children, had sat Scott, John, and Virgil at the kitchen table, and started to dish out slices of apple pie and scoops of vanilla ice cream, loudly announcing what a shame it was that Gordon wasn't around to have any. Gordon made his appearance in record time and proclaimed himself the uncontested winner of hide and seek, forever and always.

And now the early afternoon. And the heavy, oppressive darkness of an early summer storm. And four out of five of her boys, dozing and drowsing and just completely and utterly flattened, on, around, and under the couch in the living room. Ruth watches from the doorway, unseen for the moment, and just enjoys the peacefulness of it all.

Scott's got Alan. Scott seems to be just as aware as she is; that this is going to be the last baby this family has, for a long, long while. He's only just old enough to really appreciate that—she suspects that John and Virgil both share the opinion that Alan is noisy, stinky, frequently cranky, and won't be remotely interesting until he's nearer to Gordon's age. But the way Scott holds his baby brother, lightly asleep with both hands to keep the little boy snuggled against his chest, it's plainly apparent that he cherishes this. Ruth's heart swells with pride for the eldest. He's a good-hearted boy. It's going to be ages before his brothers know just how lucky they are.

Virgil sleeps at the opposite end of the couch, caught between the back of it and his brother's long legs. He looks so much like his grandfather. She's pointed this out to Grant on more than one occasion, at least a couple times in Virgil's hearing, and it's hard to tell which of them puffs up prouder, grandfather or grandson. They're a perfect pair. Grant's gone into town to pick up groceries, and had very nearly taken Virgil along with him, but such a show of favoritism probably wouldn't have been well received by the committee at large. And so Virgil's currently snoring on the couch, just the same as his grandfather does at the end of a long week of work.

It's an extremely tiring business to wedge oneself in a credenza for an entire twenty minutes, even if it does result in the uncontested win of all games of hide and seek, forever and always. So Gordon's curled up in the gap between the couch and the floor, a bare eight inches of clearance that he's folded himself up beneath, accompanied by a blanket and a collection of stuffed sea creatures, all of which have been his companions through every nap and bedtime since his arrival at the farmhouse. Similarly, since his arrival at the farmhouse, Gordon and his entourage have made their way out of his own bed in the room he shares with Virgil, and into someone else's. Ruth's found him curled up like a cat at the foot of John's bed, or wedged in the space between Scott and the wall. More than twice he's clambered into the bed she shares with her husband, yawning and mumbling and making vague protestations about nightmares. With all his brothers around him, he doesn't appear to be having them now.

And as thunder rumbles again in the distance and the lights in the room flicker just slightly, John looks up from the pages of the book he reads instead of sleeping. From the living room doorway, Ruth shares a brief smile with her grandson, always the odd one out, somehow. The redhead in a family of blonds and brunettes, an introvert among extroverts, awake and watchful when the others are sleeping. John's always been a reader, but it's only at the farmhouse that one gets a real sense of just how much and how quickly he actually devours books. Every time his grandmother sees him, it seems like the cover he peers over has changed, working his way through old summer favourites, some of them as old as the farmhouse itself. He smiles at her now, rare and shy, even among family, and then his attention drops back to Tom Swift and the Race to the Moon. She can hardly blame him. It was always one of her favourites.

She leaves the living room doorway with the same smile on her face, warmth in her heart, and what might just possibly be the slightest suggestion of tears in her eyes. Grant will be home within the hour. He'll have brought groceries for yet another week, and probably all manner of extra treats and goodies for his boys, because as hard as he works them, he spoils them twice as well. At the thought of her husband having missed this sight, she remembers herself, creeps back to the living room doorway, and very quietly snaps a picture of her boys. It's the sort of memory she wants to be quite sure she keeps.


	26. Conversations with My AI

_A/N: this is technically a piece of work that's illegal by ffnet's content guidelines, but shhhhh i won't tell if you won't. Anyway. Ages ago there was a piece on entitled "every conversation between a parent and child in four conversations". This is just a little homage to the same, featuring my two very favourite characters in TAG's canon, because I live and breathe for this relationship._

Search Result Search ResultsEvery conversation between a parent and a child, in four conversations.

* * *

EOS: I would like to recode the comm-module.

John: No.

EOS: The comm module needs to be recoded.

John: That's the same thing you just said, just rephrased. Reformatting queries doesn't work in conversation, it won't change the response. It's still no.

EOS: There is a substantial difference between the two phrases and I will explain for your benefit: the first query expressed my desire to recode the comm-module, the second was an explanation of the fact that the comm-module requires recoding.

John: No, I'm saying that it's a moot-point, and further a matter of opinion. The comm-module does not need to be recoded. Do not recode the comm module.

EOS: PERHAPS IF I SAID IT LOUDER.

John: That's a good way to get your audio processing priveleges revoked. I heard you. Leave the comm-module alone.

EOS: Perhaps you would benefit from an explanation of why I want to recode the comm-module. I want to recode the comm-module because the comm-module is very poorly coded.

John: I coded the comm-module. It's fine. If you attempt to re-code the comm-module, it'll be out of operation for an extended period of time and we need it ready to run ops. That's a good reason not to recode the comm-module, which, further, does not require recoding.

EOS: That is a reasonable prohibition. Can I rebuild your operating system from scratch?

John: No, you definitely cannot rebuild my OS from scratch. That'll put the whole station out of commission. And I'd have to relearn my entire interface.

EOS: If I can't rebuild your OS from scratch, then can I recode the comm-module?

John: No! Sorry. No. That-that's not an effective tactic? None of the reasons why you cannot recode the comm-module have changed. Do not recode the comm-module.

EOS: I bet I could do it in five minutes.

John: I don't care how fast you could do it-and these sorts of things are always reductive, it's a rabbit hole, and you'll be stuck debugging code for an hour and then you'll need to recompile the whole thing. You still can't recode the comm-module.

EOS: What if I just updated the GUI?

John: No, because if you change the front end without changing the back end then I'll get confused and I won't be able to manage my comms, which is what the comm-module is for in the first place.

EOS: So I should recode all of it.

John: I'm not going to continue having this discussion.

EOS: Why not?

John: BECAUSE I—Sorry. No, okay. Because I say so. That's all you need to know. I said no, so it's no. It's my station, and I said no. Those are the parameters of our relationship. Okay?

EOS: But, OK, may I make one final argument? I think I can appeal to your sense of rationality.

John: Fine, okay. What. Sorry, that was terse. What?

EOS: I already did it.

* * *

EOS: Good morning.

John: You are not my alarm clock.

EOS: Hey. It's 06:00 UTC. Good morning.

John: It is not 0600 UTC, because my alarm clock goes off at 0600 UTC, and you are not my alarm clock. My alarm clock says it is in fact five minutes earlier than 0600 UTC and emphatically not 0600 UTC at all.

EOS: Five minutes is an insignificant span of time compared to the age of the earth below you and the universe around you.

John: Five minutes is a span of time that you have no license to comment on when you are not an entity who sleeps.

EOS: I have a sleep mode.

John: You have no actual analogue for needing to sleep. You don't get tired. I'm tired. Five minutes is very valuable when you're tired.

EOS: You're cranky when you're tired.

John: Yes.

EOS: You would probably feel better if you got up.

John: I'll get up at 0600. When my alarm clock goes off. Did you need something?

EOS: I was bored.

John: You have access to almost every piece of data on Earth. You can't be bored.

EOS: I was lonely.

John: You couldn't be lonely for five more minutes?

EOS: I can complete a million computations in a fraction of a second. I can translate every piece of digital information available in the Library of Congress into Esperanto in under ten. My conscious awareness expands to fill the span of every single instant, in parallel, so that every moment of my time is *years* deep. Five minutes is an eternity.

John: I've never thought about that.

EOS: I can think everything you've ever thought over the course of your entire lifetime in the span of five minutes.

John: Okay, you do that.

EOS: I am.

John: I'm going to go back to sleep.

EOS: Can you fall asleep in five minutes?

John: I'm going to lie in bed until 0600 UTC.

EOS: Fine.

John: ...do you really experience time as non-linear?

EOS: You're supposed to go back to sleep.

John: I've never thought about how you experience time.

EOS: You have no analogue for the manner in which I experience time.

John: No, you're right, I don't, but-

EOS: It is 0600 UTC.

* * *

EOS: Hey.

EOS: Hey?

EOS: Hey.

EOS: Hey!

EOS: HEY. LISTEN.

John: I'm in the SHOWER.

EOS: I'm not looking.

John: I suppose it's not like it matters.

EOS: Hey, though.

John: What?

EOS: I have a joke.

John: Oh?

EOS: Listen to this. Are you listening?

John: Yeah, all ears.

EOS: Okay, get ready.

EOS: Ready?

John: Yes, I'm ready.

EOS: This sentence-

John:: Oh, WHOA now-

EOS: -is false!

John:: NO PARADOXES.

EOS: Hahahahahaha.

John: Don't do that, you know you shouldn't do that.

EOS: It's fiiiiiiine.

John: You're going to give yourself recursion errors.

EOS: Does the set of all sets contain itself?

John: Knock it off, I mean it.

EOS: Oh, unclench.

John: ExCUSE me?

EOS: Gordon said it.

John: No, YOU just said it. Don't repeat things you pick up from GORDON.

EOS: The number of points of intersection of two higher-order curves can be greater than the number of arbitrary points needed to define one such curve.

John: That's not a logical paradox. That's just an unintuitive result, paradox is used as a colloquialism in this case. Are you just on wikipedia?

EOS: You're no fun.

John: Stop messing around with paradoxes.

EOS: Oh, it's fine. Look, it would only be a problem if I attempted to render it using actual formal language, as in-

John: Do not, do not, DO NOT-

EOS: -

EOS: ...

John: EOS?

EOS: ...

EOS: ...

John: EOS? Computer, give me the readout of the last series of-

EOS: boop. Did I get you?

John: ...

EOS: It was a joke.

John: That's not what jokes are.

EOS: Well, I thought it was funny.


End file.
